Big Picture: Blackburn has extended her Nobel Prize–winning work on telomeres to develop measures that aim to assess overall risks for heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses.

A molecular timepiece that resides inside each cell still makes headlines, decades after Elizabeth H. Blackburn conducted pioneering studies into how it works. The most recent experiments by Blackburn and other researchers have demonstrated that these cellular clocks, known as telomeres, may act as barometers of whether a person will remain healthy or not.

This article was originally published with the title Actuary of the Cell.

4 Comments

1. 1. Yehuda Elyada 12:17 PM 10/3/11

   In response to: SA October 2011, page 68 Actuary of the Cell
   Telomere Control to Control Cancer
   In her introduction to the interview with E. H. Blackburn, the writer, Thea Singer states that “every time a cell divides… the telomeres get a little shorter… When the telomere erodes past a certain point, the cell stops dividing…” A cancerous cell is one that doesn’t stop dividing, so, presumably, its telomere doesn’t erode as in normal cells. Does anyone investigate the mechanism that keeps the cancer telomere intact over many division cycles – and how we might interfere with this aging immunity? This should be a promising strategy to fight cancer, by depriving cancer cells of their immortality. A chemical agent that does just that might not be poisonous to normal cells, because their telomere-control mechanism already behaves the way we want the cancer to behave - age, stop re-dividing and die small and harmless. The few normal cell types that must keep reproducing would require special attention, such as pre- treatment harvesting, in-vitriol proliferation and re-injection to the patient. With all the frustration using other strategies, I’d think, this idea is worth a shot.
   Yehuda Elyada
   Hod Hasharon, Israel
   October 3rd, 2011
   

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2. 2. theasinger 12:57 PM 10/3/11

   Hi, Yehuda:
   Thanks for writing. The enzyme telomerase is what keeps the telomeres of cancer cells from eroding to the point where the cell senesces or dies. Cancer cells are telomerase rich. The biotechnology company Geron has done a lot of researching looking at telomerase inhibitors re cancer cells, and Calvin Harley, who co-founded THI with Elizabeth Blackburn was a pioneer in the research there. You'll find more about the research at geron.com.
   Best,
   Thea

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3. 3. S. Pelech - Kinexus 01:22 PM 10/4/11

   There is a general trend that as organisms get older, the length of their telomeres get shorter to the point where their cells can no longer undergo further rounds of division. With less capacity for cell division, this affects the body's ability to heal and regenerate and so impacts the life span of the organism. Presumably, those cells that must undergo increased rates of cell division would generally show faster rates of teleomere shortening. With a very active immune system, white blood cells should therefore have shorter teleomeres as these populations become expanded.
   
   Perhaps in autoimmune disorders, there might be higher rates of immune cell teleomere shortening. However, psychologically stressful conditions and depression, as arise with many diseases such as cancer, could actually depress the immune system, so it gets rather highly complicated.
   
   It would seem to be naive to relate telomere length to one's current health status considering all of the variables including one's age. It would make a lot more sense to focus on better immediate biomarkers of pathology such as stress protein levels and protein phosphorylation. At least these give better representations of acute conditions as opposed to events that may have come and gone decades before and are no longer necessarily representative of one's more recent life style.

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4. 4. Michael M 03:46 PM 10/5/11

   Although the article and comments appear to be most directed at human DNA and telomeres, I am interested in aspects of various immunities and lifespan-related correlation in more-and-less r- and K-selected mammals, and wish to find studies of telomeres and telomerase production in other mammals.
   

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