Chemotherapy is poison that happens to kill cancer cells faster
than it kills healthy cells; that it wreaks havoc on the bodies
of patients is unsurprising. But chemo may also affect their
unborn children. According to a new study in PNAS, the offspring
of mice treated with chemotherapy have higher rates of mutation,
even though the offspring themselves were never exposed to the
drugs. The results suggest that these mutations arise from
genome destabilization caused by exposure to chemo, rather than
just mutated sperm from the treated father. Male mice in the
study were exposed to one of three common anticancer
drugs—cyclophosphamide, mitomycin C, or procarbazine—and then
allowed to mate with untreated females. After sequencing a small
piece of DNA from the offspring, the researchers found that mice
with treated fathers had mutation rates up to twice that of mice
with untreated fathers. Notably, these mutations were present in
DNA inherited from both the treated father and untreated mother.
What this likely m