POLL: What Does the Future Hold?

Remove all ads!

Perhaps instead of looking for the "magic bullet" we should instead concentrate our efforts on the actual mechanisms of unregulated cell growth. Perhaps we should first concentrate our efforts on the actual mechanisms of regulated cell growth. I only had two semesters of biology before devoting myself fully to chemistry, but my textbook (which is in my dorm room...sigh...so I'm going on year old memory) described a cyclical cascade of reactions as the "clock" of the cellular cycle. I believe the acronymn started with a C...like CAPs or something. I also remember the book mentioning that it was a system not fully understood (or even close to fully understood if I recall).

I also read about a bit of a mystery. The ends of DNA have long segments called telometric ends (i hope i got that right). These are required because with each replication of DNA a small segment at each 5' end (again, i hope i got that right) is lost due to the fact that DNA can only be replicated in one direction. So with each replication, the telometric ends get shorter and shorter.

Here's the mystery: cancer cells have their ends restored. I don't know enough to offer a reasonable hypotheses, but my gut tells me this is significant.

 

@ Late-Night Thinker

Yes indeed, many cancer cells do have their telomeres restored, by telomerase. Their telomeres are very short, less than the threshold that causes normal cells to senesce. However, tumour cells keep dividing regardless and you get nasty chromosomal breakages and random fusions. Looking at the chaotic genomic map of any tumour cell is enough to make one wince.

I also agree there won't be a magic bullet. Glivec was an isolated case, but we need to completely understand the regulation of cell cycle before we even start to develop drugs. At the moment it's like sending soldiers into a minefield blindfolded.