Prospects for Anti-Neoplastic Therapies Based on Telomere Biology

Authors: Stewart s.A.; Hahn W.C.

Source: Current Cancer Drug Targets, Volume 2, Number 1, March 2002 , pp. 1-17(17)

Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers

Abstract:

The maintenance of specialized nucleoprotein structures at the ends of human chromosomes called telomeres is essential for chromosome stability, and plays a fundamental role in the regulation of cellular lifespan. Without new synthesis of telome-res, chromosome ends shorten with progressive cell division, eventually triggering either replicative senescence or apoptosis when telomere length becomes critically short. The regulation of telomerase activity in human cells plays a significant role in the development of cancer. Telomerase is tightly repressed in the vast majority of normal human somatic cells but becomes activated during cell immortalization and in cancers. Recent work has demonstrated that inhibiting or targeting telomerase shows promise as a novel anti-neoplastic strategy however, the biology of telomeres and telomerase predict that such approaches will differ in important ways from traditional cytotoxic drug therapies. Understanding telomerase biology may eventually lead to several types of clinically effective, telomerase-based therapies for neoplastic disease.

Keywords: Anti-Neoplastic Therapies; Telomere Biology; neoplastic disease; telomeres; telomerase; terahymena; htert gene; cancer; drug targets; immunolotherapy

Language: English

Document Type: Review article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1568009023334015

Publication date: 2002-03-01

• Current Cancer Drug Targets aims to cover all the latest and outstanding developments on the medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology, genomics and biochemistry of contemporary molecular drug targets involved in cancer, e.g. disease specific proteins, receptors, enzymes, genes.
  Each issue of the journal contains a series of timely in-depth reviews written by leaders in the field covering a range of current topics on drug targets involved in cancer.
  As the discovery, identification, characterization and validation of novel human drug targets for anti-cancer drug discovery continues to grow; this journal has become essential reading for all pharmaceutical scientists involved in drug discovery and development.

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• In this Subject: Oncology ,  Pharmacology
• By this author: Stewart s.A. ;  Hahn W.C.

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