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ZME Science reports on a Nature article (full article is paywalled) (DOI: 10.1038/nature18599) about a disease called disseminated neoplasia. The disease is a group of cancers which are thought to spread via seawater. They affect mussels, cockles, and golden carpet shell clams.
Among mussels and cockles, the cancer cells come from the same species, but the cancer infecting golden carpet shell clams comes from a different species, Venerupis corrugata , the pullet carpet shell.
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Bivalve Cancer Spreads Through Seawater
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 30 2016, @02:37PM
Cancer cells from one person would be "rejected" in a recipient similar to how an un-matched donor organ would be.
If the dose was high enough (probably more than 10^7 cells) or if the recipient was immunodeficient (remember the story about the AIDS patient who got worm-cancer) then there is a possibility that some cells might survive the immune response and form a tumor.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Thursday June 30 2016, @04:52PM
Contagious cancer, including one that was cross-species, has been observed in humans too:
- a surgeon caught cancer (malignant fibrous histiocytoma) from a patient
- Kaposi's sarcoma appeared in recipients of transplants
- a man who had a weakened immune system developed a tumour composed of cells from a tapeworm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_cancer#Instances_of_transmission_of_human_cancer [wikipedia.org]