15MinuteUpload t1_iw5nowu wrote on November 13, 2022 at 3:38 AM

Reply to comment by AkioDAccolade in How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1

In immunocompetent individuals it's unbelievably rare for a traditionally non-infectious cancer (i.e. all of them except the dog and Tasmanian devil ones) to be able to establish itself in another host, even if the cancer is directly implanted into the host. Part of the reason a natural/endogenous cancer can be so hard for the body to take care of is because it's composed of the host's own cells, which are obviously recognized as "self" and therefore less likely to come under attack by the immune system. Foreign cancers of course do not have this innate defense and so will almost always be very quickly killed off by the host's immune system.

wulfoftheorderofbio t1_iw66eoy wrote on November 13, 2022 at 6:43 AM

I was gonna say, seem to recall learning through immunology that the immune system does a pretty decent job fighting off most cancers that try to grow since the body considers them "foreign?" I need to brush up on immunology. It has been 8 years and my memory isn't what it used to be.