Enzyme to slow down ageing and treat cancer: Study

Ageing is inevitable – or so we thought. Researchers have finally decoded an enzyme known as telomerase, which could lead to drugs that slow down the ageing process, and new treatments for cancer. 

The findings conclude a 20-year investigation into the complex enzyme and put an end to much of the guesswork for pharmacists trying to find new cancer-fighting drugs. 

The research team, from the University of California in Berkley, published their findings in the journal Nature and hailed the discovery as a major leap forward in the fight against cancer and mankind’s endeavour to learn more about the human body. 

“It has been a long time coming,” lead investigator Kathleen Collins said in a statement. “Our findings provide a structural framework for understanding human telomerase disease mutations, and represent an important step towards telomerase-related clinical therapeutics.”

Telomeres are essential parts of human cells and, similar to the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces, that act like a cap at the end of each strand of DNA to protect the chromosomes. They were first discovered in the 1970s by Australian-American biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, but until now researchers have struggled to understand exactly how they work and how they can control their structure.

However, most human cells can’t copy them, which means that every time a cell splits, the telomeres become shorter. When telomeres become too short, the cell enters a state called senescence, which we simply call ageing.

What the researchers were interested in was how telomerase repairs chromosomal caps to make sure the cell’s DNA is in good shape when it divides. It’s also affected by some genetic disorders and may be an interesting way to target cancer and tumour cells where telomeres don’t seem to wear down, even though cells are constantly dividing. 

Because telomerase seems linked with ageing, researchers hoped that by decoding its structure they would be able to better understand the ageing process and how to manipulate it. Much like a puzzle, researchers already had a good idea of how a pieces of telomerase were built, but no one had yet managed to put the pieces together.

However, there’s still more work to be done before drug companies can really use telomerase’s structure to design drugs and help those living with cancer or hoping to evade some of the side effects of ageing.  

Would you take this drug to slow down ageing?