Cedric the devil becomes guinea pig

Simon Hampel

Simon Hampel

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AM - Cedric the devil becomes guinea pig

His name is Cedric and he's an extraordinary Tasmanian who may hold the key to the future of his species.

Cedric is a devil, a guinea pig and a possible saviour.

You see he's naturally resistant to the contagious facial tumours which have already killed half the devil population in Tasmania. Cedric was caught by scientists this time last year, and we reported it on AM at the time.

Now it seems Cedric is the best chance yet scientists have to developing a devil-saving vaccine, as Felicity Ogilvie reports.
Click to expand...

[ame]http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/am/200803/20090331am09-devil-tumour.mp3[/ame]
 
I would have thought that it would be better to get this devil into the captive breeding program to get his resistent genes through the population. The reason why the facial cancer is spreading between animals is that they are a have very little genetic diversity.
 
I was encouraged to hear that there might be a bit more genetic diversity than originally thought. I worked with Tassie devils from 1987 to 2004 and found them to be amazing animals. Let's all keep our fingers crossed for Cedric!
 
Sounds promising. I was quite enthralled to learn about this in our parasitology module actually - that it is apparently a direct transfer of cancer cells in bites etc, rather than a cancer-causing agent such as a virus. Its a case where the very cancer IS the pathogen. I know that doesn't mean much for the devils but its certainly a very interesting aspect of the disease!
 
@Ungulata: The other example of such "parasitic cancer" is the Canine transmissible venereal tumor observed in domestic dogs. This and DFTD do support the already long-existing practice among surgeons to be extra-careful when extracting a tumor to avoid the possible spreading of tumor cells within the patient.
 
*nods* agreed, we looked at the evolution of CTVT as well, it really is fascinating stuff eh? The mind boggles, it really does :)
 
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