RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Hannah Siddle is at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Whatsapp X Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Writing in Nature , Curd et al. 1 show that a transmissible cancer is circulating in brown bullhead catfish ( Ameiurus nebulosus , Fig. 1) in a lake between the United States and Canada. Transmissible cancers escape the confines of the individual in which they arose, spreading through cells that are passed to other organisms — these aggressive, parasitic cell lines feed off each host before moving on. This is the first finding of a transmissible cancer in fish and in fresh water, and joins similar diseases in dogs 2 , Tasmanian devils ( Sarcophilus harrisii ) 3 , 4 and numerous bivalve species 5 . The discovery of this tumour and its genetic signatures will help researchers to understand the origins of transmissable cancers, and, crucially, provide an opportunity to examine the conditions that enable transmissibility.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02287-w
Curd, E. E. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10828-6 (2026).
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The author declares no competing interests.
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