Clonally transmissible cancer

In humans, a significant fraction of Kaposi's sarcoma occurring after transplantation may be due to tumorous outgrowth of donor cells.[3] Although Kaposi's sarcoma is caused by a virus (Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus), in these cases, it appears likely that transmission of virus-infected tumor cells—rather than the free virus—caused tumors in the transplant recipients.[2]

In 2007, four people (three women and one man) received different organ transplants (liver, both lungs and kidneys) from a 53-year-old woman who had recently died from intracranial bleeding. Before transplantation, the organ donor was deemed to have no signs of cancer upon medical examination. Later, the organ recipients developed metastatic breast cancer from the organs and three of them died from the cancer between 2009–2017.[4]

In 2014, a case of parasite-to-host cancer transmission occurred in a 41-year-old man in Colombia with a compromised immune system due to HIV. The man's tumor cells were shown to have originated from the dwarf tapeworm, Hymenolepis nana.[5] In the 1990s, an undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma was transmitted from a 32-year-old patient to his 53-year-old surgeon when the surgeon injured his hand during an operation. Within five months, a tumor had developed on the hand of the surgeon and was subsequently excised. Histologic examinations of the tumor tissues from the patient and surgeon showed that both were morphologically identical.[6] In 1986, a 19-year-old laboratory worker mistakenly punctured her hand with a needle previously used to extract human colonic cancer cells. No injection of the substance occurred, and the worker suffered a small puncture wound with bleeding. Within 19 days, she had developed a small cancerous nodule on her hand. The tumor was removed soon after, and has since shown no sign of reoccurrence.[7]

Contagious cancers are known to occur in dogs, Tasmanian devils, Syrian hamsters, and some marine bivalves including soft-shell clams. These cancers have a relatively stable genome as they are transmitted.[8] Recent studies have tested whether other highly prevalent wildlife cancers, such as urogenital carcinomas in Californian sea lions, could also be contagious but so far there is no evidence for this.[9]

Clonally transmissible cancer, caused by a clone of malignant cells rather than a virus,[10] is an extremely rare disease modality,[11] with few transmissible cancers being known.[1] The evolution of transmissible cancer is unlikely, because the cell clone must be adapted to survive a physical transmission of living cells between hosts, and must be able to survive in the environment of a new host's immune system.[12] Animals that have undergone population bottlenecks may be at greater risks of contracting transmissible cancers due to a lack of overall genetic diversity. Infectious cancers may also evolve to circumvent immune response by means of natural selection in order to spread.[13] Because of their transmission, it was initially thought that these diseases were caused by the transfer of oncoviruses, in the manner of cervical cancer caused by human papillomavirus.[2] However, canine transmissible venereal tumor mutes the expression of the immune response, whereas the Syrian hamster disease spreads due to lack of genetic diversity.[14]

• Allotransplantation
• Anne-Maree Pearse
• Myxosporea – SCANDAL hypothesis

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• Clonally transmissible cancers Archived 2017-11-15 at the Wayback Machine at plos.org.