News

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...

Story behind the paper

7 October 2020

Our latest study on selfish mitochondria in the canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) was recently published in Nature Communications . How did this discovery come about? What were the major turning points in our research? Are you interested to look behind the scenes of this latest CTVT article? You can read more in...

Well done Dr. Maximilian Stammnitz!

25 September 2020

Congratulations to Max Stammnitz, who successfully passed his virtual PhD viva on the 7th September 2020! TCG members gathered together (with social distancing) after his viva to celebrate.

Selfish mitochondria in a canine transmissible cancer

16 June 2020

A new study by the Transmissible Cancer Group published in Nature Communications today! Previous research has shown that at several points in history, mitochondria - which are compartments providing cells with their energy - from unrelated host dogs have been captured by CTVT, perhaps to aid survival of this long-lived...