Forever young. new drugs could limit the spread of breast cancer cells (pictured here) and other cancers by revoking their ability to divide indefinitely.
cancer cells have the ability to divide indefinitely, thanks to an enzyme called telomerase giving young. Now scientists have shown how cancer cells keep this handy potion and took a first stab to block. If the technique pans, it could eventually lead to a new class of cancer drugs, the team said.
telomerase is turned off in normal cells but is particularly active in 85% of cancers. Telomerase protects DNA to complete the protective bumpers on the ends of chromosomes. This process is essential in early life because DNA could obtain otherwise degraded as cells divide rapidly. However, said Robert Newbold, a geneticist cancer at Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK, the body stops producing telomerase before birth, and a strict limit is placed on the number of times cells can divide . The ability to turn off telomerase probably evolved as an anticancer defense in the long term creatures such as humans, he said.
To study how cancer cells manage to keep the gene turned on telomerase Newbold Brunel and his colleagues and the Swiss Research Institute in Lausanne against cancer treated cells cancerous and normal fibroblasts with enzymes that digest DNA. With the applied enzyme, they found that the gene for telomerase was easier to cut and can be cut into several pieces in cancer cells - suggesting that the DNA of telomerase has been disentangled and prepared for use, the team reports in the February 1 years Cancer Research .
In a second series of experiments, this time with breast cancer cells, the team at Newbold found that genes of telomerase rolled back when the researchers added a normal copy of chromosome 3, which they had previously found to contain potentially able to turn off telomerase genes.
"Blocking this outcome would be a very able chemoprevention if it could be done specifically [for the telomerase gene]," agrees Woodring Wright, a cell biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "But it may be difficult," he warns.
Related Sites
Cancer Research UK
Lab Newbold
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