As if you needed a new reason to love elephants, they may soon be saving human lives.
Scientists have replicated a protein found in the blood of elephants that may have cancer-curing properties. At the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah, oncologist Doctor Joshua Schiffman has been working with the protein for years.
“Elephants almost never get cancer, and we think the reason why is they have extra copies of this cancer-fighting protein,” Schiffman told CNN. “The elephants have had 55 million years of research and development to really design the perfect cancer-fighting protein.”
Schiffman and a team of researchers studied elephants from the Barnum and Bailey circus, eventually isolating a protein called TP-53.
When the protein is introduced into human cancer cells, it attacks, damaging and even killing the cancer.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
“I watch those videos of those cells dying, every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed,” Schiffman said. “Because this, for us, this is our inspiration.”
At its present stage, there’s no guarantee the protein will work as a cancer cure for humans, but Schiffman is devoted to seeing it through the next stages of testing.
“Cancer doesn’t sleep,” he said, “and neither should we.”
The research team is now moving into the next phase of study, and the Huntsman Institute will need to raise about $2 million to fund animal, and eventually human, trials.
