Chernobyl’s mutant wolves have developed anti-cancer abilities

Wolves

New research indicates that wolves living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) have evolved anti-cancer genomes. Studying this new ‘superpower’ could help humans in the fight against the deadly disease.

The population of wolves in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone of Ukraine grew rapidly after the 1986 nuclear disaster that forced humans to abandon the area. When the Chernobyl power plant exploded in 1986, it released cancer-causing radiation into the environment and led to the evacuation of over 1 lakh people from the area. A 1,000-square-mile zone was roped off to prevent further exposure to cancer-causing radiation, according to the New York Post.

However, wildlife has reclaimed the area in the 38 years since the explosion. A pack of wolves, seemingly unaffected by chronic exposure to the radiation, also roams the CEZ.

The wolves seem to have developed cancer-resistant abilities that have made them a topic of fascination for scientists and the subject of a decade-long study.

Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist at Princeton University, has been studying the Chernobyl wolves for 10 years. In 2014, Love and her colleagues collected blood samples from the wolves to better understand their response to the radiation. Some of the animals were also fitted with GPS collars.

“We get real-time measurements of where they are and how much [radiation] they are exposed to,” Love said in a statement.

They discovered that Chernobyl wolves are exposed to upwards of 11.28 millirem of radiation every day for their entire lives, over 6 times the legal safety limit for the average human worker.

Love and her colleagues discovered that wolves in Chernobyl have “altered immune systems, similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment,” as compared to wolves outside the exclusion zone.

Scientists hope that by isolating anti-cancer genetic mutations in wolves, they will be able to better identify the mutations that can help humans survive cancer.