Latest In Cancer Therapy Research

According to scientists working at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wistar Institute, all cancers have something in common : an enzyme called telomerase. Telomerase is associated with the uncontrollable cell growth in as many as 90 percent of all human cancers. It was first discovered in the mid 1990′s and since then scientists have been working and finding ways how to stop this enzyme from forming but lack of knowledge hindered them.

Now, Emmanuel Skordalakes from Wistar Institute’s Gene Exression and Regulation Program, was able to decode part of the structure of telomerase and translate it into a 3-D image. He states, “Knowing the physical structure of this complex will give pharmaceutical companies a direct target for designing drugs that disrupt a mechanism that telomerase uses to assemble itself. Such drugs could well have significant anti-cancer activity.”