New Research

I recently came across this article and wanted to share it with you guys. Its about cancer treatment and the research going on. Sounds pretty convincing, i think i should look in a little more detail, as it sounds quite simple. If it were so simple people would not have spent so much time on research, someone must have thought about this earlier. Anyways, here's the article:


Researchers have identified a chemical chain of events that leads cancer cells to age, and thus stop reproduc­ing. By exploiting this process, they propose, scientists might be able to develop new cancer therapies.

The molecular sequence of events, called a signaling path way, is described in the March 18 issue of the research journal Nature by investigators Paolo Pandolfi of the Harvard Medical School and colleagues.

Cancer cells are normally able to reproduce themselves indefinitely with out ageing; this indeed is a core aspect of the problem confronting cancer victims. The out-of-control cell division leads to the creation of an ever-growing load of tumors.

The newfound pathway drives cell ageing, or “senescence,” only in cancerous conditions, according to Pan dol­fi’s group. A key component of the pathway is a gene called Skp2, the scientists reported. By suppressing this gene, they found that they could profoundly restrict tumor formation in mice by causing cancer cells to age. The process curbed cell division.

The researchers also found that a Skp2-blocking drug induced ageing in a laboratory culture of human prostate cancer cells.

Because the new found ageing pathway seems to operate only in cancer, it raises hopes that it could prove a use­ful target for anti-cancer treatments, which might avoid harming healthy cells, the researchers argued. Such a treatment might also have the advantage of operating in a wide array of different cancer types.

“The challenge ahead is to test whether these pre-clinical studies in mice can be translated into more effective cancer therapies,” wrote Manuel Serrano is of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, in a commentary accompanying the study in Nature.

Hope you found it interesting and informative.

coutesy: world science