長寿齧歯類ハダカデバネズミを用いた老化研究

Naked mole-rat（NMR）is a subterranean mammal native to Africa. NMR lives in an underground colony averaging 60-80 individuals, including a single breeding "queen", oneto- three "king" and many sterile subordinates. Surprisingly, NMRs live up to around 30 years, 10 times longer than mice, and captured colonies almost never show tumor formation. Understanding these animals’ anti-cancer and longevity mechanisms may lead to advances in human treatments in the future. From 2010, we have studied the mechanisms of longevity, cancer-resistance and sociality of NMR. Recently, we generated NMR-induced pluripotent stem cells（NMR-iPSCs）and found that NMR-iPSCs do not exhibit teratoma-forming tumorigenicity due to the species-specific activation of tumor-suppressor alternative reading frame（ARF） and a disruption mutation of the oncogene ES cell-expressed Ras（ERAS）. Here, I review the recent progress in the NMR research field.