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Telomerase and Cancer

A Promising Target

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  • Published:
American Journal of Cancer

Abstract

In the increasing search for cancer-specific vulnerabilities, considerable attention has been focused in the past few years on telomeres, the natural termini of eukaryotic chromosomes which are maintained by the enzymatic complex telomerase. The limited capacity to divide is a long-recognized characteristic of normal cells in culture and one that distinguishes them from transformed cells. This finite replicative potential is not linked to the chronological age of the culture, but to the number of cell divisions and to telomere length. Studies in yeast, mice, and humans have shown that telomerase-positive cells can grow indefinitely. However, when telomerase is absent the resulting loss of telomeric DNA from the ends of chromosomes results in the eventual cessation of cell division.

Although most normal human tissues lack telomerase, which limits their proliferative potential, telomerase is expressed in most human cancers. This has raised the intriguing possibility that telomere maintenance might be a block on the path to immortalization and thus may provide a cancer-specific target. Moreover, the recent finding that telomerase is expressed by endothelial cells of brain tumor vasculature strongly suggests that telomerase is involved in brain tumor angiogenesis, and confers a further value to telomerase-inhibiting strategies as a potential target both in neoplastic cells as well as in endothelial cells.

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Acknowledgements

Our work is supported by Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondi d’Ateneo, Università Cattolica. The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

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  1. Istituto di Neurobiologia e Medicina Molecolare-CNR, Viale Marx 15/43, 00137, Rome, Italy

    Maria Laura Falchetti & Andrea Levi

  2. Institute of Neurobiology and Molecular Medicine, Rome, Italy

    Roberto Pallini

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  1. Maria Laura Falchetti
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  2. Roberto Pallini
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  3. Andrea Levi
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Correspondence to Maria Laura Falchetti.

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Falchetti, M.L., Pallini, R. & Levi, A. Telomerase and Cancer. Am J Cancer 3, 1–11 (2004). https://doi.org/10.2165/00024669-200403010-00001

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