A report suggestive of canine transmissible venereal tumour in a medieval hunting manual

Abstract

The canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) is a cancer lineage that is passaged between dogs by the transfer of living cancer cells during mating. This disease, which causes the appearance of genital tumours in male and female dogs, is found in many countries around the world. An analysis of the CTVT genome estimated that this disease may have first arisen from the cells of an individual dog that lived about 4000–8500 years ago (1). Comparison of CTVTs collected from around the globe indicated that modern tumours found on different continents diverged only about 500–1000 years ago, suggesting that CTVT may have hitchhiked with global expeditions during the Age of Discovery (1-3).