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Nature 434, 829-830 (14 April 2005) | doi:10.1038/434829a; Published online 13 April 2005
Medicine: Aborting the birth of cancer
Ashok R. Venkitaraman1
Abstract
Can cells sense and stop uncontrolled division driven by cancer-promoting stimuli? Perhaps so, given evidence that aberrant division can trigger the cellular response to DNA damage — blocking growth — at early stages in human cancer.
Why human cancer is not more frequent remains a mystery, given our trillions of susceptible cells, each with many genes subject to mutations that could ignite uncontrolled cell proliferation. One intuitive concept — which has been in the spotlight for decades — is that normal cells can somehow perceive and arrest aberrant cycles of cell division that are triggered by cancer-promoting (oncogenic) stimuli, such as the inappropriate activation of oncogenes.
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