News

Happy New Year 2026 from the TCG! We started the social TCG gatherings of this year with a lunch to celebrate birthdays of a number of TCG members. We also welcomed new members to our lab and had a visit from Nicolas Bierne, a population geneticist from the University of Montpellier.Now we are all looking forward to the exciting discoveries in the …

Christmas TCG celebration with lots of amazing cultural food, fun quiz and a Secret Santa! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Dr Julie Dragon from the University of Vermont visited the TCG group and gave a fascinating talk to the whole department. She talked about a melanoma, which has been present in brown bullheads (a type of catfish) in a lake spanning Vermont, USA and Quebec, Canada since 2012, and their genetic analysis of these samples. We all had a lovely dinner in…

A number of TCG members took part and presented their work at the third biennial Companion Animal Genetic Health (CAGH) conference which was held on 8th-9th December in Cambridge. It was a wonderful collaborative meeting with lots of inspiring talks, discussions and a conference dinner at the St John's college. Many thanks to the organisers, and we…

Some of the TCG group members attended the 1st POPCAN meeting at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London on 1st December - it was an afternoon full of stimulating talks (including one by our PI, Liz Murchison) as well as an authentic experience of the London underground during rush hours. We look forward to the next one!

The founder of WECare, Dr Janey Lowes, visited the Transmissible Cancer Group to share her experience of TVT in street dogs of Sri Lanka. It was a fascinating presentation with lots of photos to show how effective vincristine treatment can be when treating TVT infection in dogs - Janey and her team have treated some horrific TVT cases with an amazi…

Congratulations to one of our undergraduate students, Rebecca Scott, who has been shortlisted as one of the final three students of the Fellows of the Future Student Competition to present her research at this year’s RCVS Fellowship Day! Rebecca’s project work focused on the face and body location of tumours in Tasmanian devils infected with Devil …

The first TCG movie night at the cinema! What a fun social evening for the whole group – we went to see a movie filmed just around the corner, in some of the University of Cambridge colleges!

The Transmissible Cancer Group is now recruiting a PhD student for an exciting new project investigating the long-term stability of DNA methylation in mammalian transmissible cancers.This research will provide intriguing insights into how gene expression programmes evolve over extended time periods, potentially illuminating fundamental aspects of c…

We had an enriching time listening to Anna Schönbichler’s presentation about her work on Tasmanian devil cell lines. Anna is currently a PhD student at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. Thank you for sharing your interesting results with us, Anna!

In September, members of the TCG group had the pleasure of meeting Grace Russell from the Menzies Institute of Medical Research at the University of Tasmania, who told us about her work on adenovirus receptor modelling and on nanobodies. Thank you for your visit, Grace!

The Transmissible Cancer Group soaked up the sun, enjoyed Cambridge views, and even tried our hand at frisbee on the 2025 punting trip. Events like this are extremely important to us as a team, providing opportunities to chat and connect outside of the lab.

The Transmissible Cancer Group had a fantastic time at the 2025 Lab retreat, which took place over two days on June 3rd and 4th at Newnham College. We came together to share our big ideas and future plans, engaging in discussions about lab research cultures. We also enjoyed the beautiful gardens of Newnham and had a lot of fun at the bowling evenin…

New research from the Transmissible Cancer Group at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, has revealed that cancer cells can sometimes take up and integrate DNA from normal cells of the body. Cancers are usually considered “clones”. This means that cancer cells are believed to carry only the DNA of the original cell that b…

Tasmanian devils, marsupial carnivores endemic to the Australian island of Tasmania, are susceptible to two transmissible cancers, known as devil facial tumour 1 (DFT1) and devil facial tumour 2 (DFT2). A new study from the Transmissible Cancer Group at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, published today in Science, investigated the evolution of…