DALLAS & HOBART, Tasmania--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 1, 2026--
A contagious facial cancer has erased roughly 80% of Tasmania's wild devils since it surfaced in the 1990s, and biting, a natural behavior for feeding and mating, spreads it faster than conservation can contain it. The Colossal Foundation, the nonprofit conservation arm of Colossal Biosciences, is now joining the fight. It has partnered with the University of Tasmania to attack Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) on two fronts.
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Two related cancers, DFT1 (first documented in 1996) and DFT2 (identified in 2014), are nearly always fatal, and because devils are Tasmania's apex scavenger and predator, their loss ripples across the island's ecosystems.
The partnership pairs two approaches: a field-ready oral bait vaccine designed to train the devil immune system to destroy DFT1 and DFT2 cells, developed by the University of Tasmania's Wild Immunology Group under Associate Professor Andrew Flies; and gene-editing research on LZTR1, a gene implicated in the origin of DFT1. The goal is to explore whether correcting devil-specific mutations could reduce susceptibility to the disease.
The Colossal Foundation is also establishing a new fat-tailed dunnart research colony at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research in Hobart, built on husbandry protocols from Colossal's thylacine de-extinction program. The colony will let researchers run vaccine safety trials in a biologically relevant marsupial model — a required step before any devil trials begin.
"Devil facial tumour disease is one of the most devastating wildlife diseases on Earth," said Matt James, Executive Director of the Colossal Foundation. "...By combining [Andy Flies'] work with Colossal's marsupial husbandry, reproductive science, and gene-editing platform, we have a real opportunity to accelerate this effort and give the Tasmanian devil a fighting chance."
"We've spent years developing a vaccine designed to train the devil immune system to fight these cancers but progress is slow due to the challenges of working with an endangered species and having a lack of marsupial research tools," said Associate Professor Andrew Flies at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania. "...Partnering with the Colossal Foundation can significantly accelerate our vaccine work, and allow us to explore a gene-editing strategy in parallel that could enhance the vaccine and make devils more resistant to DFTD."
The collaboration builds on the marsupial biotechnology platform Colossal developed through its thylacine de-extinction program, which previously enabled engineered cane toad toxin resistance for the endangered northern quoll.
ABOUT THE COLOSSAL FOUNDATION
The Colossal Foundation is a 501(c)(3) dedicated to supporting the use of cutting-edge technologies to conservation efforts globally to help prevent extinction of keystone species. The organization deploys cutting-edge de-extinction technologies and support to empower partners in the field to reverse the extinction crisis. www.ColossalFoundation.org.
ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA AND THE MENZIES INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH
The University of Tasmania is Australia’s fourth-oldest university and the only university based in Tasmania, with a deep institutional commitment to research that addresses the unique conservation, health, and environmental challenges of its island state. The Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania’s flagship medical research institute, is one of Australia’s leading health and medical research institutes. The Menzies Wild Immunology Group, led by Associate Professor Andrew Flies, focuses on wildlife immunology and vaccine development, including efforts to protect Tasmanian devils from devil facial tumour disease. Learn more at menzies.utas.edu.au.
ABOUT BONORONG WILDLIFE SANCTUARY
Established in 1981, Bonronog Wildlife Sanctuary is an iconic enterprise committed to the conservation of native species, through wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, education, and experiences that connect people and wildlife. Learn more at bonorong.com.au.
Colossal Foundation Partners With University of Tasmania on Vaccines and Gene Editing to Fight Devil Facial Tumour Disease
Mark Sherman has covered the Supreme Court for The Associated Press for 20 years during some of the most momentous decisions in history. He retired on Tuesday, the last day of the court term, and reflects on his experience. He has witnessed how by both happenstance and design the court has moved to the ideological right.
At the end of my first term covering the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer departed from his prepared remarks to offer a sharp courtroom rebuke of his conservative colleagues.
“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said, dissenting in a school integration case.
The moment was instructive to me as a new reporter on the Supreme Court beat. It encapsulated a term in which a new conservative majority had prevailed in one 5-4 case after another. But more than that, it was a very human reaction from a frustrated justice whose black robe was meant to convey a certain dull sobriety.
I would be on the lookout for such departures for the rest of my 20 years at the court.
In that time, almost by happenstance more than design, the court has marched to the ideological right. Unexpected vacancies, brute force political maneuvers and the rise of Donald Trump all combined to give the court a conservative supermajority, and with that change the direction of the country.
When I started covering the Supreme Court in 2006, the center of gravity had just shifted slightly to the right, from Sandra Day O’Connor to Anthony Kennedy.
Together they had helped preserve abortion rights in 1992, then been part of a five-justice majority to insure George W. Bush’s election in 2000 in Bush v. Gore.
Kennedy is lionized in some quarters for his opinions in favor of gay rights, including the landmark decision that declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right. In different settings, it’s his majority opinion in Citizens United that comes in for high praise, which enabled a flood of independent spending in political campaigns.
But a larger change was afoot. It started when Antonin Scalia died suddenly of a heart attack, in February 2016.
Liberals salivated at the prospect of a court that might pivot left, rolling back gun rights and reimposing campaign finance limits that had recently been overturned.
Certainly abortion and affirmative action would be safe, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg assured me when we spoke that summer.
Sitting across from me in her court office filled with modern art and mementos, Ginsburg seemed confident that the next occupant of the White House would be a woman, Democrat Hillary Clinton. The next president, “whoever she may be,” Ginsburg said, might get to fill three vacancies, not just Scalia’s seat. At least two other justices in their 80s or nearing that milestone might retire, herself included.
I broke the spell. What if Clinton were to lose, I asked. “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs,” she said.
Ginsburg was more right than wrong. She was incorrect about the outcome. Clinton lost the election, in part because of conservative voters’ worries about the future of the Supreme Court.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader at the time, had maneuvered to keep Scalia’s seat open until after the election, even after Obama nominated the well-respected federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, who had previously won broad bipartisan support.
But she nailed just about everything else. The next president, Donald Trump, did appoint three justices. And everything was on the table, including abortion and affirmative action.
Instead of writing about a new liberal court majority, one on which more moderate justices like Breyer and Elena Kagan would play decisive roles, I have reported on the triumph of the conservative legal project, decades in the making, and to the great satisfaction of Republicans who wanted to reverse liberal rulings from previous decades.
It has become commonplace for justices to time their retirements so that they can be replaced by someone with the same judicial philosophy.
Ginsburg, having decided to remain on the court, died less than two months before the 2020 election and her deathbed wish that her seat not be filled before then was ignored.
The last two justices who retired, Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan and Stephen Breyer, appointed by Bill Clinton, were replaced by people who once served as their law clerks.
It’s not a criticism of Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson, each with a sterling legal resume. Instead, it’s telling that the effort to coax a justice into retirement might be more likely to succeed if a former clerk is in the running for the seat.
The country accepts that the direction of the court turns not just on who the president is, but the late-in-life decisions of the justices themselves.
There are no Trump judges or Obama judges, only an independent judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts told me several years ago after I asked whether he’d have any comment on President Donald Trump’s criticism of an “Obama judge.”
Roberts was right in one respect. Judges, justices included, don’t vote robotically in favor of the president who appointed them. In just one example, two Trump-appointed justices voted against the president’s unilateral, global tariffs, for which Trump criticized them in harsh, personal terms.
But Trump clearly was right, too. In this era, presidents nominate justices because their records show they can be counted on.
Since 2010, the conservative justices all have been appointed by Republican presidents. The liberals, by Democrats. The consistent message from both sides is that too much is at stake to risk a selection mistake.
One of the advantages of zealously keeping cameras from the courtroom is how little known most justices are. Some of that has changed as seven of the nine justices have written or are writing books which they then go on tour to promote. They have collectively earned millions of dollars.
It’s remarkable how unobtrusively justices used to move around town. It was not uncommon to run into Ginsburg and her family at a movie or a play, see Thomas making his way to and from Mass most mornings, bump into Kagan at a supermarket or get in line behind Sotomayor at a weekend farmer’s market on Capitol Hill.
The justices drove themselves to work most days. Scalia once got a traffic ticket for a minor fender-bender on his way into work.
Early in my time in Washington, I recall walking past the court and seeing a Volkswagen with New Hampshire plates parked on Maryland Avenue. The dry cleaning lying in the back erased any doubt about whose car it was. “Souter,” the label said, as in Justice David Souter of New Hampshire.
Security concerns have grown exponentially over the years. By the time Kavanaugh joined the court, security was much tighter. Federal agents were stationed outside Kavanaugh's house in suburban Maryland when a would-be attacker armed with a pistol, knife and zip ties showed up there late one night in 2022 and eventually pleaded guilty to trying to assassinate the justice.
Until the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt strongly that the world, as it were, was waiting for my assessment of what had happened in the courtroom on any given morning. I was among a handful of reporters who hurried downstairs after arguments ended to bat out a first take on where the court appeared to be headed in its biggest cases.
News organizations regularly asked for live access to big arguments and the response was always, No. Then the pandemic shut down the world and institutions scrambled to figure out how to cope. For the court, that meant remote argument sessions, with no choice but to allow the public to listen in, live.
That experiment produced the occasional embarrassing moment, including an audible and unexplained toilet flush. But mostly it worked, and Americans could hear the court in action. Even when the justices returned to the courtroom in 2021, the livestream remained.
Selfishly, my coverage feels less vital because anyone who cares can listen and assess what is being said. Decisions post quickly to the court's website. No one is hanging on my words.
The growth of emergency appeals also has changed covering the court, and not for the better. In years past, I could know from a glance at the calendar when I’d be very busy. But emergency appeals can pop up any time (and did with alarming frequency during Trump’s second term) and decisions on those appeals also could come at any time, during the regular workday or even after midnight.
FILE - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is interviewed by Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in her chambers in Washington, Aug. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Interns run to deliver documents to the media after a Supreme Court ruling outside the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
A group prays outside of the Supreme Court ahead of the court's ruling on whether transgender girls and women can play on school athletic teams, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court is seen as the Justices release opinions, in Washington, Monday, June 29, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Mark Sherman poses for a photograph outside of the Supreme Court Tuesday, June 30, 2026, on the last day of the Court term on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
