To Save the Tasmanian Devil From a Contagious Cancer, Scientists Are Recruiting an Unlikely Stunt Double

Long before Hollywood discovered the stunt double, nature had already perfected the idea — and right now, a mouse-sized marsupial called the fat-tailed dunnart is about to take on one of conservation's riskiest assignments. The Colossal Foundation, the nonprofit arm of de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences, today announced a new partnership with the University of Tasmania to combat devil facial tumour disease, a contagious cancer that has devastated the Tasmanian devil since it was first identified in 1996. A second strain emerged in 2014. Both are nearly always fatal, and together they have driven the wild devil population down by roughly 80 percent.

The disease spreads the way almost nothing else in nature does — through biting, a behavior so central to how devils eat and mate that it has made the cancer nearly impossible to contain by conventional means. The partnership attacks it on two fronts. University of Tasmania immunologist Andrew Flies has spent years developing a field-ready oral vaccine designed to teach the devil immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells before they take hold. Alongside it, researchers will explore editing a gene called LZTR1 — tied to two unusual mutations found only in devils — to see whether reversing it could make the species naturally more resistant to the cancer in the first place.

“Devil facial tumour disease is one of the most devastating wildlife diseases on Earth. This contagious cancer is pushing an iconic marsupial toward collapse, with consequences for the ecology of an entire island,” said Matt James, Executive Director of the Colossal Foundation. “Andy Flies and his team at the University of Tasmania have built the most advanced DFTD vaccine pipeline in existence. By combining that work with Colossal’s marsupial husbandry, reproductive science, and gene-editing platform, we have a real opportunity to accelerate this effort and give the Tasmanian devil a fighting chance.”

That's where the dunnart comes in. Before any vaccine or gene edit can be tested in an endangered devil, it has to be proven safe in a stand-in, and the dunnart, a close evolutionary cousin of the devil, is uniquely built for the role. The Colossal Foundation is helping the University establish a dedicated dunnart colony in Hobart, transferring breeding and husbandry protocols its team originally built for an entirely different mission: bringing back the thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger.

But here's what makes this bigger than one disease, or even one species. The same genome-editing and stem-cell tools developed to resurrect something that no longer exists are now being redirected to keep something that does exist from disappearing. “This partnership reflects exactly why Colossal exists,” said Ben Lamm, Co-Founder and CEO of Colossal.

“Our de-extinction programs are fueling the development of entirely new biological tools and platforms. In Australia, the work we are doing to bring back the thylacine has already helped establish the dunnart as a powerful model for marsupial genomics and reproductive science. We’re now deploying those same technologies against one of the most devastating wildlife diseases on Earth. This is what the conservation power of de-extinction looks like.”

The stakes have a hometown audience, too. "For nearly thirty years, we have watched DFTD mercilessly take countless devils from the Tasmanian landscape. At Bonorong we've cared for hundreds of Devils as this horrific plague rages on," said Greg Irons, Director of Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. "Anything that gives our devils a real path back deserves our full support.” With this new collaboration, the race against extinction might finally be turning in favor of the devils. The future of a species once thought to be on the brink may now depend on the success of these tiny, unlikely heroes.