A NEW line of attack on cancer could be on the cards, say researchers in
Australia who have discovered how some cells manage to keep dividing.
Normal cells can’t become cancerous because their chromosomes have fuses, or
“telomeres”, on their ends that get shorter every time a cell divides. This
eventually stops cell division.
To turn cancerous, cells must patch up their telomeres, which they usually do
with an enzyme called telomerase. Blocking telomerase looks like a promising way
of treating cancer
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 2 September, p 25).
But some cancer cells manage to patch up their telomeres without…
