News

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...

Human anti-cancer drugs could help treat transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils

3 April 2020

TCG PhD graduate Adrian Baez-Ortega won Weintraub Graduate student Award for 2020!

2 March 2020

Many congratulations to Adrian Baez-Ortega, who won Weintraub Graduate student Award for 2020! The Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award recognizes outstanding achievement during graduate studies in the biological sciences. This is a very prestigious international graduate student award from the US! Awardees will...

Many congratulations to Dr. Maire Ni Leathlobhair

20 December 2019

TCG second PhD, Dr. Maire Ni Leathlobhair, was officially graduated! Maire obtained her PhD from Cambridge in 2018 and used computational and statistical modelling of genomic data to understand the origin and evolution of transmissible cancer. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Cancer Genomics group led by...