Oct 09, 2015 12:22 PM EDT By Rashmi Kalia, UniversityHerald Reporter

A new study reveals that elephants seem to fight cancer extremely well with the use of a special set of proteins that kill the damaged cells, New York Times reports.

The study was published on Thursday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Schiffman and his colleagues, who worked on the study, reported that elephants have a remarkably low rate of cancer. They reviewed zoo records on the deaths of 644 elephants and found that less than 5 percent died of cancer. In comparison, 11 percent to 25 percent of humans die of cancer.

"Every baby elephant should be dropping dead of colon cancer at age 3," said Dr. Joshua D. Schiffman, a pediatric oncologist at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.

Working independently, Vincent J. Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues have come to the same conclusion.

Scientists investigated a gene in elephants that is crucial for the prevention of cancer, called p53. This gene prevents cells from dividing further and even causes cells to commit suicide.

Dr. Schiffman and his colleagues found that there are 20 pairs of p53 in elephants, while humans have only one pair of p53 genes.

For the study, Dr. Schiffman and his colleagues attacked elephant cells with radiation and DNA-damaging chemicals, while in the other study Dr. Lynch's team used chemicals and ultraviolet rays. In all these cases, the elephant cells, instead of trying to repair the damage, simply committed suicide.

"It's almost as if they said, 'We're elephants - we've got plenty more cells where those came from,' " Dr. Schiffman said.

Dr. Schiffman is now investigating how to apply the new findings on human beings suffering from cancer.  He also said that it would be useful to look at other big or long-lived animals as well. 

Dr. Schiffman said that parrots, tortoises and whales may all have special tactics of their own to live long and fight cancer.

"The war on cancer was going on long before there were humans," he said. "So let's look at nature's strategies."

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