No end in sight for telomerase-targeted cancer drugs

• Published in: Nature medicine Vol. 19; no. 1; p. 6
• Main Author: Williams, Sarah C P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.01.2013; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/67/1059/153; Antimitotic agents; Antineoplastic agents; Antineoplastic Agents - therapeutic use; Biomedicine; Cancer; Cancer Research; Clinical Trials as Topic; Drug therapy; Enzymes; Genetic aspects; Humans; Indoles - pharmacology; Indoles - therapeutic use; Infectious Diseases; Metabolic Diseases; Molecular Medicine; Molecular Targeted Therapy; Neoplasms - drug therapy; Neoplasms - enzymology; Neurosciences; news; Niacinamide - analogs & derivatives; Niacinamide - pharmacology; Niacinamide - therapeutic use; Peptide Fragments - pharmacology; Peptide Fragments - therapeutic use; Pharmaceutical industry; Physiological aspects; Product development; Telomerase; Telomerase - antagonists & inhibitors; Telomerase - metabolism; Telomerase - pharmacology; Telomerase - therapeutic use; Thrombocytosis - drug therapy; United States
• ISSN: 1078-8956; 1546-170X
• DOI: 10.1038/nm0113-6

On paper at least, the telomerase enzyme seems like a perfect cancer target. Telomerase expression is essential for the proliferation of most cancer cells, but the enzyme is inactive in the majority of normal human tissues. That means that inhibiting the chromosomeelongating enzyme should, in theory, be a relatively safe and effective way to, if not directly kill, at least weaken cancer cells before treating with other agents. Putting that idea into practice has proven more difficult than drug companies expected, but a new wave of clinical trials testing novel combinations of drugs and new patient populations is finally providing evidence that telomerase inhibitors might be an effective cancer treatment, at least when it comes to some tumor types.