Don't want cancer? Be an elephant

One third of all adults will get cancer over their lifetime. Less than 5% of elephants ever get cancer. So what is the elephant's secret? Elephants have 20 times more p53 than humans do. p53 is a powerful tumor suppressor protein that causes cell death or apoptosis. When elephant cells are damaged they undergo cell death. In contrast, human cells stick around and accumulate cell damage that can result in cancer. I will draw for you how a sun burn damages DNA and how p53 reacts to cells damage by 1) cell cycle arrest or 2) cell death in a human versus an elephant.

Sources:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/sc....

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/ful...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26447...