University of Tasmania pairs vaccine work with gene editing
A disease that has erased roughly 80% of Tasmania’s wild devils since the 1990s is the target of a new research partnership in Hobart.
Colossal Foundation and the University of Tasmania will combine a field-ready oral bait vaccine programme with gene-editing research aimed at devil facial tumour disease, a transmissible cancer spread by biting during feeding and mating.
Two related cancers drive the crisis: DFT1, first documented in 1996, and DFT2, identified in 2014. Both are nearly always fatal.
Because Tasmanian devils are the island’s apex scavenger and predator, their decline affects wider ecosystems as well as the species itself.
Researchers at the University of Tasmania’s Wild Immunology Group, led by Associate Professor Andrew Flies, developed the vaccine to train the devil immune system to destroy DFT1 and DFT2 cells.
Meanwhile, the gene-editing work will focus on LZTR1, a gene implicated in the origin of DFT1. Scientists want to test whether correcting devil-specific mutations could reduce susceptibility to the disease.
Menzies Institute dunnart colony
Colossal Foundation is also setting up a new fat-tailed dunnart research colony at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research in Hobart.
That colony will let researchers run vaccine safety trials in a biologically relevant marsupial model, a required step before any Tasmanian devil trials can begin.
The colony will use husbandry protocols from Colossal’s thylacine de-extinction programme and build on the company’s wider marsupial biotechnology platform.
“We’ve spent years developing a vaccine designed to train the devil immune system to fight these cancers but progress is slow due to the challenges of working with an endangered species and having a lack of marsupial research tools,” Flies said.
He added that working with Colossal Foundation should speed up the vaccine programme while researchers explore gene editing in parallel.
Matt James, executive director of Colossal Foundation, called devil facial tumour disease “one of the most devastating wildlife diseases on Earth” and said the partnership could accelerate the effort.
