Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

Re:Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of ... by ryandvm on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @09:27PM (#13067965)

The ability to regenerate body parts and cancer are not inextricably linked. Take the axolotl. It has the ability to regenerate entire limbs. It's also estimated to be a couple orders of magnitude more resistant to cancer than humans.

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Re:Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of ... by trentmb on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @09:51PM (#13068073)

> Take the axolotl. It has the ability to regenerate entire limbs. It's also estimated to be a couple orders of magnitude more resistant to cancer than humans.

The lifespan of of the axolotl is 10-15 years. I'd love to see the cancer rates for 71 year old axolotls.

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Re:Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of ... by mattnewton on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @09:36PM (#13067999)

Maybe that's the ticket? The cancer resistance is something that allows the axolotl to also keep regrowing limbs around in the genome?

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Re:Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of ... by dharma1 on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @05:32AM (#13069680)

There are also many animals who are long living, and immune to cancer (to varying degrees). Naked mole rats live up to 30 years and almost never get cancer (only one case formally verified so far).

Elephants have many more cells than us, and live to almost the same age, but only have a 5% chance of getting cancer, vs 10%-25% in humans. Lions have a 2% chance of getting cancer.

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Re:Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of ... by lordnacho on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @09:25AM (#13070928)

Out of curiosity, how do we know the cancer rates of various animals?

Someone would have had to examine a lot dead animals of various species to figure this out.

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