News

Cells of a transmissible cancer can take up DNA from their normal neighbours

23 April 2025

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...

New study from the Transmissible Cancer Group reveals evolution of Tasmanian devil cancers

21 April 2023

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 ...

ANIMATION: Oronasal CTVT

11 July 2022

ANIMATION: Male dogs four times more likely to develop oronasal form of CTVT than females A short animation about our latest research that was recently published in the Veterinary Record shows why male dogs are more likely to develop the oronasal form of CTVT. Credit for the animation goes to the talented Emma Werner –...

Male dogs more likely to develop oronasal CTVT

6 July 2022

Male dogs are four times more likely to develop the rare oronasal form of CTVT than females A new paper from the Transmissible Cancer Group published in the Veterinary Record shows that male dogs are four to five times more likely than female dogs to be infected with the oro-nasal form of canine transmissible venereal...

Congratulations Dr Baez-Ortega!

23 May 2022

Congratulations to Adrian Baez-Ortega, who was officially awareded his PhD degree at the Senate House last week!

Come and join us! Open positions at TCG

2 February 2022

There are open positions for PhD students and postdocs at the Transmissible Cancer Group. Come and join us studying dogs and devils! There will be cancer genomics, field work, tumour immunology, single cell RNAseq and more! Closing date 25 February 2022. More information can be found here .

Research perspectives on transmissible cancers

2 February 2022

The Transmissible Cancer Group was proud to highlight two important new papers on transmissible cancers in two perspective articles published in Molecular Ecology and Vet Record . The two perspectives commented on fantastic new papers by Hammel et al ( Molecular Ecology) and Gibson et al ( Vet Record). The new findings...

Science and SciLifeLab Prize awarded to Adrian Baez-Ortega

26 November 2021

Huge congratulations to Adrian Baez-Ortega on being awarded one of the 2021 Science and SciLifeLab Prizes! Adrian won the award for his essay entitled "As cancer grows old", which describes his PhD research investigating the genetics of the canine transmissible venereal tumour. His essay has been published in Science https...

No evidence for clonal transmission of two animal cancers

13 October 2021

Transmissible cancers arise rarely in nature. However, these contagious clones may be more frequent than is known at present. We tested whether two cancers affecting aquatic animals are clonally transmitted. Fibropapillomatosis is a cancer affecting green sea turtles, and goldfish are frequently affected by a type of...

Evolution and geographical spread of a Tasmanian devil transmissible cancer

24 November 2020

A new paper from the Transmissible Cancer Group at the University of Cambridge Department of Veterinary Medicine reveals how a transmissible cancer has spread through the Tasmanian devil population, and how this cancer’s genome has evolved and diversified during it evolution. Tasmanian devil facial tumour 1 (DFT1) is a...