Chicken could help fight cancer

The common domestic chicken could provide some very uncommon clues for fighting off diseases and might even offer new ways to attack cancer, according to a team of international researchers that includes a Texas A&M University professor.

James Womack, distinguished professor of veterinary pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M University, is co-author of a paper detailing the team's work that appears in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists).  Womack was a leader in the international effort to sequence the cattle genome in 2004.

Womack and the team, comprised mostly of scientists from the Seoul National University in Korea, examined 62 White Leghorn and 53 Cornish chickens for diversity in NK-lysin, an antibacterial substance that occurs naturally in animals and is used as a method of fighting off diseases.

They were able to obtain two genetic variations of NK-lysin and the results offered two unexpected shockers - both showed abilities to fight off bacterial infections and other diseases, while one showed it could successfully fight cancer cells as well.

"It took all of us by surprise," Womack says of the findings.

"One of the genetic variations shows it has the ability to fight against cancer cells much more aggressively than the other variation. We certainly were not looking at the cancer side of this, but there it was."