Advance May Lead to New Class of Cancer Drug

Researchers are reporting that new research decoding a key enzyme may be a breakthrough that could lead to a completely new class of anticancer therapies.

Dr. Emmanuel Skordalakes, a professor at the Wistar Institute (Philadelphia, PA, USA), reported that telomerase is present in nearly all cancers and presents an ideal target for drug researchers. Once telomerase is activated in cancer cells, it opens the way to endless replication. Suppressing that process could have vast implications.

"That means that a drug that deactivates telomerase would likely work against all cancers, with few side effects,” remarked Dr. Skordalakes. His team of investigators was able to create a three-dimensional structure of the active region of the enzyme by using X-ray crystallography. More research is needed, according to the investigators, on whether a telomerase inhibitor can successfully work as touted. However, researchers in the field noted that the new study represents a major breakthrough in cancer biology.

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