Tasmanian devil cancer advances made

MELBOURNE, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Australian scientists say they are a step closer to diagnosing and vaccinating against a puzzling facial cancer driving Tasmanian devils toward near-extinction.

Devil facial tumor disease -- which has wiped out nearly 70 percent of all devils on the Australian island of Tasmania since 1996 and could obliterate the population in 35 years -- likely began in the animals' Schwann cells, a type of tissue that protects nerve fibers, the researchers from Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment and Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research say.

The cancer is transmitted when the carnivorous marsupials bite each other's faces during fights, the researchers say in the Friday edition of the journal Science.

The aggressive, parasitic cancer grows rapidly, blocking the animal's mouth and spreading to other organs. The affected animals typically starve to death.

Transmissible cancer is extremely rare, scientists say. The only one other known type is canine transmissible venereal tumor, spread in dogs through sexual activity.

The Tasmanian researchers have also identified genetic markers for the devils' disease, helping doctors easily distinguish the facial tumor disease from other devil cancers and eventually helping determine a genetic pathway to attack the tumor itself.

"This is the first application of genetics to estimate the basic biology of the tumor," study co-author Tony Papenfuss, a bioinformatics researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, told Time magazine.

"And we've produced a set of tools that can push that information further."

Pappenfuss says it will take time to transform the new results into a successful vaccine. But Australian and U.S. researchers have compiled a catalog of devil genes that may contribute to the tumor's growth -- which could help design a vaccine.

The difficulty will be creating a treatment that attacks the tumor, but spares healthy cells, Papenfuss says.