Can you catch cancer?

Описание: We don’t normally think of cancer as a contagious disease—but should we? Biology is fascinating, weird and occasionally horrible but, from an 10,000-year-old dog tumour to cancers caused by malaria, understanding the strange world of catch-able cancer will allow us to save a lot of lives.

This video was sponsored by Merck as part of The Sustainables, their project to showcase Merck’s work on using curiosity to improve people’s lives and safeguard the environment. #AlwaysCurious

• Find out more about their work on global health, and an eco-friendly mosquito repellent called IR3535, here: https://www.merckgroup.com/en/sustain...
• Find out more about schistosomiasis, and Merck’s Praziquantel donation programme, here: https://www.merckgroup.com/en/sustain...


Video chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:31 Dogged persistence (CTVT)
02:26 A devil of a cancer (DFTD)
04:36 Cancer transplants
06:53 Hard to stomach (H. pylori)
08:19 Cancer vaccines (HPV)
09:36 Worms (schistosomiasis)
10:29 Malaria and kissing
12:16 Conclusion
13:45 Thanks Merck!


Sources and further reading

A paper on canine transmissible venereal tumour, discussing its origins and evolution (sadly paywalled) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gde.2015.03...

CTVT spread https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...

Devil’s facial tumour disease spread via https://www.utas.edu.au/news/2021/3/4... / https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...

A paper on transmissible cancer in shellfish (sadly paywalled). Fascinatingly, some cancers can infect different species of mollusc to the one they originated in! https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18599

The surgeon who cut himself and caught cancer https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...

‘Of 30,765 transplants from 14,986 donors, 18 recipients developed DOC from 16 donors (0.06%): 3 were DDC (0.01%) and 15 were DTC (0.05%).’ https://journals.lww.com/transplantjo...

Case report about the HIV patient who died of cancer caught from his tapeworm https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1505892

Calculations about causes of cancer https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Statistics on cancers caused by infection https://canceratlas.cancer.org/risk-f... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31862... https://gco.iarc.fr/

Cancers most commonly caused by HPV https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statis...

Vaccination against HPV can prevent 90% of HPV-related cancers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-591...


Credits

DFTD image by kind permission of Dr David Hamilton. Thanks David! Here’s a thread on his research:   / 1336484353191243776  

Schistosome image CC Jana Bulantová https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...


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