p53-Mediated Cancer Resistance in Elephants and Bats: A Comparative Review

Cancer has a high mortality rate among humans, however, despite having many more cells than humans, some large and long-lived animals rarely get cancer. This phenomenon here, is known as Peto’s paradox, which questions the traditional comprehension of cancer risk in humans. This review explores natural cancer resistance methods seen in elephants and bats and sheds lights on how these biological ways may influence new approaches for human cancer research. Multiple copies of the tumor suppressor gene TP53 has been found in elephants. These along with enhanced apoptosis pathways allow efficient destruction of damaged cells. Similarly, bats, which are long-lived animals with high metabolic activity, show unique DNA repairing process, immunity and oxidative stress tolerance. Altogether, these are thought to contribute to cancer resistance in bats. This review compares these different evolutionary strategies, revealing the key aspect in human cancer biology of p53 involvement in the preservation of genomic stability and the control of cell fate. Even though these mechanisms cannot be directly applied to humans, they offer effective conceptual frameworks to come up with future cancer treatment. The ultimate goal of this review is to provide fundamental ideas in cancer biology and comparative oncology to students and explain how evolutionary biology may be used to guide current cancer studies.