Three years ago, oncology researchers discovered that elephants have 20 copies of p53, a gene that’s essential to cancer suppression. Humans, by contrast, have just one copy of p53. The researchers, which included a team at the University of Chicago, concluded that elephants are especially resistant to cancer because of p53—but they didn’t know the exact mechanism by which the tumor suppressor gene works.

Now the Chicago team has uncovered a key part of that process: a nonfunctioning, or "zombie" gene. The gene, called LIF6, is activated in elephants by p53, after which it kills cancer precursor cells. They believe that the discovery, which they described in the journal Cell Reports, could boost efforts to develop drugs for people that target p53.

Cells that are unable to repair DNA damage often go on to become cancerous. Elephants are estimated to have 100 times as many of these cancer precursor cells than people do, but less than 5% of captive elephants end up dying from the disease. To try to figure out why that is, the University of Chicago team has been studying elephant cells.

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