Cancer is too complex to be studied only in laboratory animals, in genetically identical strains and under controlled conditions. Real life is not a laboratory; in real life cancer arises from complex interactions between multiple genes and environmental factors that cannot be easily replicated. One solution is to extrapolate precious findings on carcinogenesis that can be translated to humans from naturally-occurring cancers in non-laboratory, wild animals, which spend the whole life in the world and not inside a laboratory cage. Today’s special patient is a bulky, marine mammal from California: the sea lion. What can we learn from it?

The science magazine “Scientific American” has recently included genetic vaccines in the “Ten technologies to keep an eye on”. The research of new vaccination strategies must take into consideration not only the vaccine-induced immune response, but also practical factors like ease of production, storage and costs: DNA meets most of these criteria, which makes it a suitable candidate for the generation of vaccines against infectious diseases or cancer.

One of the main problems with immunotherapy is that some people respond better than others to treatments. A patient’s striking response to CAR (Chimeric Antigen Receptor)-T cell based therapy in a recent clinical trial has encouraged researchers to go into the reasons for this unexpected success. There is something “broken” in this patient, which allowed CAR-T cells to induce remission of leukaemia: a gene called TET2 does not do its job. How does it affect response to treatment?

Isn’t it ironic that members of the camelid family (camels, llamas, dromedaries) or sharks that are so bigger than we are, present antibodies that are smaller than ours? Just as curious is that these “miniature antibodies” first detected in 1993 are very interesting for a number of biotechnological applications and scientists think that they could lead to drugs for cancer and other diseases.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) developed a personalized approach that has led to complete tumor regression in a patient with metastatic breast cancer, where all other treatments failed. They used the patient’s own immune cells, but only those recognizing a set of mutated proteins expressed by the patient’s tumor.

We are used to considering viruses as enemies, tending to forget the multitude of their other applications in biotechnology and biomedicine. For one thing, did you know that viruses could be weapons against cancer cells? In fact, that is precisely what oncolytic viruses are used for. Moreover, a review recently published on Nature Immunology explores their possible combination with other anti-neoplastic agents and especially with cancer immunotherapy. Viruses and immune system: two sworn enemies that somehow work “together” against tumour cells.

Sometimes, veterinary oncologists find themselves curing unusual patients. This one has a shell, it is green and spends most of its life underwater: it is the sea turtle Chelonia midas, belonging to Chelonidae family. Fibropapillomatosis is a devastating cancer in sea turtles and often leads to death. Where is the research to cure these wonderful reptiles?

Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells targeting epidermal growth factor receptor (HER2) showed excellent pre-clinical efficacy in vitro and induced durable regression of medulloblastoma in xenograft mouse models. Let’s go introduce the protagonists of this study.