Regenerative cell turnover coupled to a tumor-hostile niche protects naked mole-rats from cancer

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Abstract
Long-lived species suppress cancer despite accumulating somatic mutations throughout life, but how this is achieved in renewing tissues remains unclear. Here, we show that naked mole-rat skin uncouples high cellular turnover from cancer risk through coordinated epithelial and stromal mechanisms that constrain clonal outgrowth and suppress tumor-promoting inflammation. Despite elevated epidermal proliferation and mutational burden, naked mole-rat skin maintains tissue integrity through an expanded pool of early committed progenitor (hybrid) cells and replication-coupled genome maintenance pathways. Under chronic carcinogenic stress, undifferentiated basal cells replenish the hybrid progenitor pool. This dilutes initiated clones and permits only limited selective expansion of rare cancer gene–mutant clones. Depletion of the hybrid compartment shifts this protective state toward clonal expansion and inflammatory activation. These expanding clones are further constrained by a highly tumor-suppressive stromal microenvironment, driven by fibroblasts that adopt a metabolically restricted, non-inflammatory program. Together, our data uncover a multi-layered tumor-suppressive strategy that couples turnover-driven regeneration with an anti-permissive stromal niche to prevent malignant progression under mutagenic stress.

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