SYDNEY: Australian researchers have identified a surprising mechanism focusing on telomeres -- protective caps at the ends of chromosomes -- that can help cells defend against cancer.
Telomeres are known to play a key role in ageing and cancer prevention.
However, with age, these structures naturally shorten, signaling ageing cells to stop dividing -- a crucial safeguard against cancer, according to the study by Sydney-based Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI) on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.
"Our data shows telomeres are much more active. They can acutely respond to stress and actively open up to turn on a cellular response that looks like ageing. They do this to avoid cancer," said Tony Cesare of the Genome Integrity Unit at CMRI.
Cesare and his team worked with their collaborators at the University of Kyoto to understand the "active" role that telomeres can play in avoiding cancer.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, revealed that telomeres do more than just passively shorten with age. They actively respond to stress by triggering cellular ageing processes to prevent cancer from developing.
"Most people think of telomeres as a passive entity that shortens with cell division. This is a passive fail-safe used during ageing," Cesare said.
By inducing cell cycle arrest or programmed cell death, telomeres help eliminate cells with chromosomal damage before they can divide uncontrollably, he said, adding this discovery introduces a previously unknown anti-cancer function of telomeres.
Beyond its significance for telomere biology, Cesare suggests that this breakthrough could open new avenues for cancer treatment -- targeting telomeres to trigger cell death in cancerous cells may offer a promising therapeutic strategy.
As per the latest estimates, in 2022, there were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million deaths.
About 1 in 5 people develop cancer in their lifetime, approximately 1 in 9 men and 1 in 12 women die from the disease, according to data from the World Health Organization.