Week13 cancer+aging
2016 Genomics
How can we cure cancer by using Genomics?
:sugessting new ideas
Chaeeun Lee
Introduction
Nowadays, many people died by cancer. According to Cancer Research UK, cancer is the main cause of death in almost all ages. Also, it is revealed that cancer is related with genetic mutation. Therefore, genomics researchers have focused on cancer and have found some genes which can cause cancer also known as oncogene.
Although, as time goes by, more and more genes which increase the probability of getting cancer are found, there is not much difference in curing cancer in our society. Cancer is still frightening disease. Therefore, we should consider how genomics can be used to cure cancer and what kind of information is needed to solve certain problems.
Discussion
Firstly, if the specific gene which can cause cancer is found, it is much easier to develop a drug. By gathering plenty of data from patients, we can check the role of gene and who it affects to our body by checking KEGG pathway. By using this information, we can block the main cause by synthesizing certain drugs which works for the main cause in certain organ. Also, it can give a guidance to choose patient-specific drug. It’s because as testing, doctors can know what kind of mutation or oncogene patients have. However, this kinds of drugs have side effects and not suit for every cases. Also, to develop new drugs, it needs a lot of time and funding. Moreover, new kinds of cancer cells which has different mutation emerge, so we could not find the eventual solution.
Second method is Gene-editing. It is much more direct way to cure the cancer. Also, it is quite essential solution because it fix the main problem, by editing the specific site. For example, in case of CRISPR-Cas9 system, it used CAs9 enzyme to cut specific region of DNA and edit the sequence by guiding RNA. However, it does not guarantee that the target gene is removed in all cells. Also, as it cut the DNA, non-homologous end joining occur and it can lead to other mutations.
Third methods are the new idea that I made. What about stopping cancer by aging? Actually, cancer cells keep proliferating and hardly ever stop. Although aging is also not good factor for us, cancer is fetal, so it can be a solution to suppress the cancer growth. First way is to block the activity of the telomerase. In case of adult stage, most of cells in humans does not activate telomerase. However, in case of cancer cell, it can keep replicating because they activate the telomerase to lengthen the telomere length. Second way is merging the gene of Progeroid syndromes with cancer. People who have this Progeroid syndromes age faster than normal people. Also, it caused by genetic mutation before they are born and also it is not inherited by their parents. Therefore, there exist the genes which occur Progeroid syndromes. So, if we inject the DNA which contains that gene directly to the cancer cells, we can suppress the cell cycle of cancer cell and finally it die because of rapid aging.
Conclusion
We usually thought that both cancer and aging are bad. However, they cause problems in opposite direction, so we can merge them together to make normal. There could be flaw or limitation in the new ideas but it can be a suggestion to cure the cancer.
Reference
Telomerase in the human organism, Kathleen Collins and James R Mitchella, [1]
CRISPR: gene editing is just the beginning_The real power of the biological tool lies in exploring how genomes work, Heidi Ledford