Elephants have been my favorite animal for as long as I can remember, and now I have yet ANOTHER reason to love them: elephants are helping oncologists in their search for a cure for cancer. How is this possible? According to recent studies from the University of Utah and Arizona State University, scientists have likely found a biological mechanism, which immensely increases elephants’ risk of beating cancer.

For years, scientists have been perplexed on why even though “elephants have 100 times as many cells as humans,” they are extremely unlikely to die from cancer. Due to elephants’ massive size, “they should be 100 times more likely to have a cell slip into a cancerous state and trigger the disease over their long life span of 50 to 70 years.” So, why have researchers found that elephants only have a 5% mortality rate from cancer, as opposed to an 11 to 25 percent mortality rate among humans?

This dramatic difference between mortality rates is a result of the elephants’ biology compared to ours. Based on years of research and studies on numerous elephants, scientists have found that “elephants have 38 additional modified copies (alleles) of a gene that encodes p53, a well-defined tumor suppressor, as compared to humans, who only have two” (The University of Utah). This means that elephants may get cancer at a much higher rate than humans, but their bodies are able to fight it off much more efficiently. P53 is becoming a major focus of researchers. Scientists have found that elephants possibly possess a mechanism for killing potentially cancerous cells within their bodies. “In isolated elephant cells, this activity is doubled compared to healthy human cells, and five times that of cells from patients with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, who have only one working copy of p53 and more than a 90 percent lifetime cancer risk. The results suggest extra p53 could explain elephants’ enhanced resistance to cancer” (The University of Utah). Li-Fraumeni Syndrome causes its sufferers to be more susceptible to certain types of caners. If there were a way to insert additional p53 genes in humans, would our cancer mortality rate dramatically decrease?

Joshua Schiffman, a pediatric oncologist at Huntsman Cancer Institute believes that “ ‘[n]ature has already figured out how to prevent cancer. It’s up to us to learn how different animals tackle the problem so we can adapt those strategies to prevent cancer in people’ ” (The University of Utah). Maybe we have been searching for a cure in all of the wrong places, as a true cure has been right in front of us for decades.

Scientists were able to prove their hypotheses from years of extensive research. They picked apart the genome of African elephants and discovered minimally 40 copies of genes that contain p53. Why do elephants have so many more p53 genes than humans? Studies show that most of the p53 genes “are so called retrogenes, modified duplicates that have been churned out over evolutionary time” (The University of Utah). Evolution is at it again! In order to test “whether the extra gene copies may protect elephants from cancer, [t]hey extracted white blood cells from blood drawn from the animals during routine wellness checks and subjected the cells to treatments that damage DNA, a cancer trigger. In response, the cells reacted to damage with a characteristic p53-mediated response: they committed suicide” (The University of Utah). Through this experiment, scientists were able to prove that genes possessing p53 force cancerous cells to die.

This process kills damaged cells, which means that the cell is gone forever, and therefore cannot turn into cancer. Schiffman believes that “this may be more effective of an approach to cancer prevention than trying to stop a mutated cell from dividing and not being able to completely repair itself” (The University of Utah). It is clear that with any type of potential problem in any aspect of life, it is more beneficial to stop the problem before it starts, as opposed to trying to fix the mess it created. P53 cells in elephants typically kill off cancer cells before they even become cancerous. This is much more effective than trying to rid yourself of numerous cancer cells, after they have multiplied and spread throughout your body.

Another hypothesis tested was whether p53 protected elephants from cancer by increasing the body’s response to damage within it. To test this, Schiffman and his team of researchers “did a side-by-side comparison with cells isolated from elephants, healthy humans, and patients with Li-Fraumeni Syndrome. They found that elephant cells exposed to radiation self-destruct at twice the rate of healthy human cells and more than five times the rate of the Li-Fraumeni cells (14.6%, 7.2%, and 2.7%,, respectively). These findings support the idea that more p53 offers additional protection against cancer” (The University of Utah). Scientists believe that the p53 gene is saving the elephants form extinction. Due to their massive body size, hundreds of thousands of elephants should have died from cancer, but this is not true. Could p53 save humans as well?

Evolution has allowed elephants to overcome cancer, and hopefully humans are saved soon as well. Schiffman believes that the “the real takeaway [from his research] is essentially that evolution had over 55 million years to figure out how to prevent cancer in elephants, and now the challenge is to learn how to apply that knowledge to our own patients.” If evolution has helped animals guard themselves from cancer, why has it not helped humans? Schiffman believes that this is due to humans living lifestyles other than the ones we were evolved to live, hinting at the increase in technology. “From the lack of exercise to unhealthy foods… modern humans have put themselves on a somewhat unnatural track” (Mastroianni). While scientists do not exactly how to increase p53 in humans, they are in the process of finding a way. I believe that through cloning and replication, higher amounts of p53 could potentially be inserted into humans. Cancer is cancer, whether it is in animals or in humans. Therefore I believe that if increased p53 is able to save elephants from cancer, it should be able to save humans as well. If scientists find a way to insert additional p53 copies into humans, researchers could perform multiple experiments. A blinded randomized experiment would be possible, through congregating a large sample size. This group could then be split into two subgroups: experimental and control. The control group would receive a placebo option, and the experimental group would receive the p53 treatment. While the researchers would be aware of which group received which treatment, the doctors and the patients would not know. This would allow scientists to do extensive research on the effects of p53. From numerous experiments such as this one, we would be able to determine if the presence of p53 truly does help humans combat cancer.

People will try whatever they can to save themselves from cancer. I think that humans would be very open to the idea of using p53 to help them beat cancer. Maybe in the future, humans will have higher levels of p53, therefore stopping cancer before it is able to start.