Did you know that elephants get much less cancer than humans, despite being 100-times larger? Often times, solutions to the toughest questions in medicine can be found in nature. Dr. Carlo Maley, an evolutionary and cancer biologist, discusses how nature has already beaten cancer, and the possibility of using those methods in humans.

Dr. Carlo Maley applies tools from evolutionary biology and ecology to tumors in order to understand and prevent the evolution of malignancy and therapeutic resistance.

While interested in all cancers, Dr. Maley currently works on Barrett’s esophagus, acute myeloid leukemia, lung cancer, and breast cancer. In this work, his team uses measures of the rate of evolution in the tumors to predict which patients will develop malignancy and succumb to their disease. He is also working on novel approaches to prevent the evolution of resistance and transform cancer from an acute disease to a chronic, non-lethal disease. His team is working on comparative oncology to discover how large long-lived organisms like whales and elephants are able to prevent cancer much more effectively than humans.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx