About

Dr. Lisa M. Abegglen is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Utah and an investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Her work focuses on understanding how animals naturally resist cancer and other diseases, and how these insights can be used to improve human health and wildlife conservation. She co-discovered that elephants have extra copies of the tumor suppressor gene TP53, which contributes to their enhanced cancer suppression and provides a model for developing new therapies. Dr. Abegglen also leads a cross-species biobanks, with samples from a large number of diverse species. Using these resources, her research explores the genetic and cellular mechanisms that influence cancer risk and immune defense, with an emphasis on translating evolutionary discoveries into novel strategies for cancer prevention and treatment. In addition, she studies elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus-hemorrhagic disease (EEHV-HD), focusing on how harmful innate immune responses drive severity and how they might be targeted to improve survival and support conservation.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Genetics
• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Evolutionary biology
• Pathology
• Computational biology
• Zoology
• Anesthesia
• Immunology
• Demography

Selected publications

• Divergent understandings in comparative oncology

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-02-02

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Testing Nature’s Defenses: Inducing Cancer in the Naked Mole Rat

  Cancer Discovery · 2026-01-12

  articleSenior author

  Although mice develop lung cancer from a single Eml4-Alk driver fusion, Shepard, Lester, and colleagues show that naked mole rats require three simultaneous oncogenic events: Eml4-Alk, Tp53 loss, and Rb1 loss, achieving only 30% tumor penetrance. This inducible cancer model in naked mole rats offers a unique platform for uncovering mechanisms of cancer resistance and modeling rare pleomorphic lung carcinomas. See related article by Shepard et al., p. 35.

  PublisherDOI

• Abstract 7639: Primate comparative oncology reveal humans' unique cancer susceptibility

  Cancer Research · 2026-04-03

  article

  Abstract Studying cancer from an evolutionary perspective can yield important theoretical and applied insights; however, little is known about the prevalence of cancer among non-human primates. Non-human primates are our closest living relatives, yet the primate lineage is phenotypically diverse, exhibiting wide variation in evolutionary and life-history characteristics. By integrating comparative phenotypic data with prevalence records of neoplastic disease, we assembled a dataset of 2,095 individuals from 36 species across nine primate families to examine cross-species cancer risk. Additionally, functional in vitro studies using isolated and cultured primary fibroblast cell lines from representative species show that resistance to cellular death correlates with certain life-history traits. Comparative phylogenetic modeling of human cancer risk, situated within the broader primate phylogeny, demonstrates a drastic reduction in cancer risk even among primates most closely related to humans (e.g., the great apes). Together, large-scale cancer prevalence records and functional assays provide valuable insights into the ecological and cellular dynamics of cancer in our closest living relatives—and in ourselves. Citation Format: Zachary Taylor Compton, Walker Mellon, Lisa M. Abegglen, Tara Harrison, Joshua D. Schiffman, Amy M. Boddy, Carlo C. Maley. Primate comparative oncology reveal humans' unique cancer susceptibility [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2026; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2026 Apr 17-22; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2026;86(7 Suppl):Abstract nr 7639.

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table S8 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  supplementary-materialsOpen access

  <p>Cell line collection and passage number information for the functional cell assays</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figure S71 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  preprintOpen access

  <p>Analysis our of our regression results with various data transformation techniques</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table S7 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  supplementary-materialsOpen access

  <p>Results from the bootstrap analysis of different sample size cutoffs</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figure S72 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  preprintOpen access

  <p>High resolution cladogram from Figure 6 in the main text with the species' names as tip labels</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table S2 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  supplementary-materialsOpen access

  <p>All data prevalence leaderboard</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figure S41 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  preprintOpen access

  <p>Multivariate PGLS regression analysis</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table S4 from Cancer Prevalence across Vertebrates

  2025-01-13

  supplementary-materialsOpen access

  <p>Phylogenetically controlled binomial regression results</p>

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel T. Chang

  400 shared

• Robert H. Bell

  Durham University

  300 shared

• J. Costello

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  300 shared

• Lih‐Shen Chin

  Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

  300 shared

• Gary K. Steinberg

  Stanford Medicine

  300 shared

• Erik P. Sulman

  New York University

  300 shared

• Sylvia K. Plevritis

  300 shared

• N. Saito

  300 shared

Education

• PhD, Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis

  Emory University

  2005

• BS, Genetics

  University of Georgia

  1997