Chemotherapy and chromosomes: understanding the connection
Cancer types:
General cancer research
Project period:
–
Research institute:
The AIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology (IFOM ETS)
Award amount:
£187,335
Location:
Italy
Dr Ylli Doksani and his team in Italy are exploring a protein called telomerase which appears to have an impact on the outcomes of chemotherapy treatment. They hope to reveal new targets for therapy which could lead to successful treatment for more people.
Hope for the future
Chemotherapy is one of the most common cancer treatments. Around 1 in 4 cancer cases in the UK are treated with some form of chemotherapy. It works by using very strong drugs to damage and kill cancer cells. Although it helps a lot of people, chemotherapy does not work for everyone or for every cancer type and sometimes cancer can become resistant to treatment over time.
Dr Ylli Doksani and his team hope they can better understand the role of the enzyme telomerase in hindering current chemotherapies. Telomerase is switched off in normal cells but is switched on in around 9 out of 10 tumours, making it a promising target for therapy. By better understanding how telomerase behaves in cancer cells, the researchers hope to find potential new therapy targets leading to new cancer cures.
Meet the scientist
Dr Doksani loves to play soccer – he has played since he was little, and says “It's fun, it keeps me fit, it helps relieve stress and it's a great social activity!” If he had to pick, two books that he has found truly inspiring are Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman and The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb.
The science
The DNA in your cells is organised into chromosomes. At the ends of our chromosomes sit structures called telomeres which protect the chromosomes from becoming damaged. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres become slightly shorter. Eventually the telomeres become so short that the cell cannot divide and the cell dies.
Cancer cells are able to divide uncontrollably which should cause the telomeres to become very short and the cell to die. Most cancer cells avoid dying this way though because they have a protein called telomerase that lengthens the telomeres.
Dr Ylli Doksani believes that telomerase might be playing a role in helping cancer cells survive chemotherapy treatment and that telomerase may also be influencing other properties of cancer cells. In this project Dr Doksani and his team will investigate these ideas using a variety of techniques including a “mini-chromosome system” created by their lab to look at cell division.
I hope that our experiments will help clinicians design better therapies that kill cancer cells without harmful side effects on the healthy tissues.
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