Editor's Summary

30 November 2006

Cancer and cell senescence

Cancer is commonly thought of as uncontrolled cellular proliferation, but in the early stages of many cancers, oncogene expression is associated with cellular senescence. A possible explanation for this has now been found. Two groups report a link between oncogene-induced senescence and the DNA damage response. Activated oncogenes can cause aberrant DNA replication and thereby DNA damage that can lead to cell senescence. Cellular senescence was found previously to be a barrier to tumorigenesis in vivo, so oncogene-induced senescence may be an innate defence against cancer. But its effectiveness is often disabled by further mutations. Understanding the relationship between cell senescence and tumour formation may aid in the development of diagnostic and prognostic tools based on senescence markers.

Letter: Oncogene-induced senescence is part of the tumorigenesis barrier imposed by DNA damage checkpoints

Jirina Bartkova, Nousin Rezaei, Michalis Liontos, Panagiotis Karakaidos, Dimitris Kletsas, Natalia Issaeva, Leandros-Vassilios F. Vassiliou, Evangelos Kolettas, Katerina Niforou, Vassilis C. Zoumpourlis, Munenori Takaoka, Hiroshi Nakagawa, Frederic Tort, Kasper Fugger, Fredrik Johansson, Maxwell Sehested, Claus L. Andersen, Lars Dyrskjot, Torben Ørntoft, Jiri Lukas, Christos Kittas, Thomas Helleday, Thanos D. Halazonetis, Jiri Bartek and Vassilis G. Gorgoulis

doi:10.1038/nature05268

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (794K) | Supplementary information

Letter: Oncogene-induced senescence is a DNA damage response triggered by DNA hyper-replication

Raffaella Di Micco, Marzia Fumagalli, Angelo Cicalese, Sara Piccinin, Patrizia Gasparini, Chiara Luise, Catherine Schurra, Massimiliano Garre', Paolo Giovanni Nuciforo, Aaron Bensimon, Roberta Maestro, Pier Giuseppe Pelicci and Fabrizio d'Adda di Fagagna

doi:10.1038/nature05327

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,280K) | Supplementary information