A Collaborative Grant between Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine (TriCEM) and AKC Canine Health Foundation (CHF)

Cancer is a heterogeneous or widely divergent collection of diseases with a similarly wide variety of outcomes, natural histories and responses to therapy. While new medical and genomic data have shed light on the molecular mechanisms causing cancer, why cancer should occur in the first place remains unclear. Equally perplexing is why some organisms or individuals seem more or less likely to get cancer. This project uses the unique biology of deer mice (Peromyscus) species to identify the genes contributing to longevity and cancer resistance in P. leucopus, the white-footed deer mouse. Since the 1950s it’s been known that P. leucopus is very long lived for such a small rodent and has a similarly low rate of cancer compared to common or laboratory mice. Our project will use comparative genomic comparisons between P. leucopus and its close relatives to discover the extraordinary ways animals have “invented” to reduce cancer. These findings will inform the field of cancer genetics, and will be translatable to larger mammalian species such as dogs and humans.