Though cancer is a common condition, affecting around one-third of people, it can sometimes show up in very unusual ways. Doctors in the UK have just documented an incredibly rare—and ultimately tragic—case of cancer shared between identical twins in the womb.

Scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and others detailed the case in a report last week. One twin developed the cancer, which then spread to the other, they found. Unfortunately, neither child survived, but the lessons learned from the case just might teach us something new about the nature of twins, the researchers say.

“Overall, as well as mapping tumor spread in utero, our work delineates a powerful approach to reconstructing the earliest steps that lead from the zygote to the genetic segregation of twins,” they wrote in their paper, published in the journal Nature Communications.

According to the report, doctors first noticed something was wrong when a fetal imaging scan detected a mass on one of the twins’ faces. As a result, they decided to deliver the children early, at 34 weeks of gestation, via a caesarean section. Both twins had noticeable tumors throughout their bodies, and both sadly died soon after birth.

With the permission of the family, the researchers then conducted a deep genetic analysis. They sequenced the entire genome of cells taken from the newborns and their tumors. Though identical twins do share the same genetic make-up, it doesn’t take long for unique mutations in each to accumulate. This allowed the researchers to trace back the genetic path these children and their cancers took.

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