Unexpected superpowers of Chernobyl mutant wolves have been revealed: resistance to cancer

A new study has found that mutant Chernobyl wolves roaming the vicinity of the infamous nuclear power plant appear to have developed resistance to cancer.

Wolves are exposed to cancer-causing radiation as they roam the wastelands of an abandoned town near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but researchers have found that some of their genetic information appears to be resistant to increased risk of disease.

So, as Sky News reports, the mutant wolves roaming the deserted streets of Chernobyl appear to have developed resistance to cancer, raising hopes that the findings could help scientists fight the disease in humans.

In 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl power plant in the Ukrainian SSR – more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the city because the explosion released cancer-causing radiation, Sky News recalls.

The area has remained eerily abandoned ever since, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was created to prevent people from entering the 1,000-square-mile zone where radiation still poses a cancer risk.

People may not have returned, but wild animals such as wolves and horses roam the wasteland of the evacuated city more than 35 years after the disaster, Sky News reports.

Kara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist at Princeton University in the US, is studying how Chernobyl wolves survive despite exposure to radioactive particles for generations.

Kara Love and a team of researchers visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2014 and radio-collared wolves so they could track their movements.

The biologist said the collars give the team “real-time information about where the wolves are and what level of radiation they are exposed to.”

Scientists also took blood samples from the animals to understand how the wolves’ bodies react to cancer-causing radiation.

Researchers found that Chernobyl wolves are exposed to more than 11.28 millirents of radiation every day throughout their lives, more than six times the legal safety limit for humans.

Cara Love discovered that wolves have altered immune systems, similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, but more importantly, she also identified certain parts of the animals’ genetic information that appear to be resistant to an increased risk of developing cancer.

Many human studies have identified mutations that increase the risk of cancer—for example, having a BRCA gene variant makes a woman more likely to develop breast or ovarian cancer. But Capa Love’s work was aimed at identifying protective mutations that increase the chances of surviving cancer.

The pandemic and armed conflict in Ukraine have prevented Kara Love and her staff from returning to the Chernobyl exclusion zone in recent years. She said: “Our priority is to keep people and staff there as safe as possible.”

Kara Love presented her findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, last month.