New test predicts cancer 13 years before it develops

Sarah Knapton writes at The Telegraph that there is a new test that can predict cancer up to 13 years before it develops.

People who develop cancer have shorter telomeres, the caps at the end of chromosomes which protect the DNA.

Telomeres sit at the end of chromosomes like the caps on shoelaces to prevent DNA from fraying.

Initially, scientists discovered telomeres aged much faster, indicated by a more rapid loss of length, in individuals who were developing but not yet diagnosed with cancer.

Telomeres in all the people who went on to develop cancer looked as much as 15 years older than those of people who were not developing the disease.

But then scientists found the accelerated aging process stopped three to four years before the cancer diagnosis.

Telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. The older a person is, the more times each cell has divided, and the shorter their telomeres.

Because cancer cells divide and grow rapidly, scientists would expect the cell would get so short it would self-destruct. But that's not what happens, scientists discovered.

“We found cancer has hijacked the telomere shortening in order to flourish in the body,” added Dr Hou.

The team is hoping that if it can identify how cancer hijacks the cell, then treatments could be developed to cause cancer cells to self-destruct without harming healthy cells.

Read more here.

Thanks to Instapundit

How long are your telomeres?

These two men have been leading research into cell fitness.

Dr. Woodring E. Wright, Professor of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine, and Dr. Jerry W. Shay, Professor and Vice Chairman of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern. Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center

An article in MedicalXpress.com explains:

A novel looping mechanism that involves the end caps of DNA may help explain the aging of cells and how they initiate and transmit disease, according to new research from UT Southwestern Medical Center cell biologists.

The UT Southwestern team found that the length of the endcaps of DNA, called telomeres, form loops that determine whether certain genes are turned off when young and become activated later in life, thereby contributing to aging and disease.

"Our results suggest a potential novel mechanism for how the length of telomeres may silence genes early in life and then contribute to their activation later in life when telomeres are progressively shortened. This is a new way of gene regulation that is controlled by telomere length," said Dr. Jerry W. Shay, Professor and Vice Chairman of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern, who led the team with his colleague, Dr. Woodring E. Wright, Professor of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine.

Telomeres cap the ends of the cell's chromosomes to protect them from damage. But the telomeres become shorter every time the cell divides. Once they shorten to a critical length, the cell can no longer divide and enters into a senescent or growth-arrest phase in which the cell produces different products compared to a young quiescent cell. Most research in this area has focused on the role that the process plays in cancer, but telomere shortening also has been shown to influence which genes are active or silent.

Read more here.