Cancer is a broad term for a collection of diseases caused when an oddly behaving cell starts to mutate and grow out of control. Families across the world are devastated by this disease, which is why scientist and biologists at The Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Centre at Nova Southeastern University in Florida have been working hard to discover a cure.

They have realised that a shark genome (a complete set of DNA) can heal and repair quicker than any human genome, and sharks have evolved to live lives because they have alway been near the top of the food chain.

Scientists will expose the mice to carcinogens, substances which can cause cancers in living tissue, before trialling it on humans, but  if it works, the shark DNA could be spliced into human DNA.

Michel Stanhope, co-author of the study, emphasizes that it will take years to turn these genes into a cancer cure for humans. Even so, he says, “I hope that people recognize the remarkable biological adaptation of these animals.”

By Freya and Eva, Year 7