Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

Blind mole rats live in the deserts of Africa, as burrowers, never expose themselves to the sun.

They live unique lives, exactly like mammalian termites, with a queen mother and a lot of pheromones. Most animals never have sex, produce milk or get pregnant in its entire life.

This animals starve, CAN adapt its body temperature to the temperature of it surroundings (i.e like reptiles do), have a slow metabolism, low respiratory rates...

And live in a clean environment free from chemicals... How much plastics, cancerous substances and pesticides can you find in a desert of Africa?... not much, I guess.

So... big surprise... they live much longer lives that rats and its tumorous cells are as lazy growing as the rest of its metabolism

The clue to beat cancer revealed by mole rats!:

Don't expose yourself to all that causes cancer, like hight metabolism rates, cancerous substances, sun rays, sexually transmitted viruses...

> CAN adapt its body temperature to the temperature of it surroundings (i.e like reptiles do)

THat's pretty much the opposite of adapting, they fail to regulate body heat (as reptiles do) and are thus at the mercy of environmental heat.

In the article they mention:

Experiments show that when HMW-HA is removed from the creature’s cells, they become susceptible to cancer, suggesting it plays a role in making the rodent ‘cancer-proof’.

And this is a good point, but I wish to add some crazy ideas

Maybe the absence of HMW-HA is boosting the metabolism in this rodents? what if those animals living in low oxigen habitats could exchange more or less oxigen by its skins HMW-HA mediated? more oxigen, more metabolic rates, more sun exposition in captive animals... cancer appears?.

Just wild speculation about a very interesting discovery; I'm not saying that this is the role of HMW-HA, I will be really very happy with the idea of a safer replacement for chemotherapy, but I wish to read studies about other possible reasons for the development of a cancer-proof system in an animal living in an apparently "not cancer prone" environment. And I'd like a lot also to have data about cancer rates in queens/kings and the other animals. There are different rates?, the same probability of having cancer in both groups?

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