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Medicine

Aborting the birth of cancer

Nature volume 434, pages 829–830 (2005)Cite this article

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. But how cells might do so remains elusive.

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Figure 1: Sensing and stopping wayward cell divisions.

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  1. the Cancer Research UK Department of Oncology and the Medical Research Council Cancer Cell Unit, University of Cambridge, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2XZ, UK

    Ashok R. Venkitaraman

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  1. Ashok R. Venkitaraman
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Venkitaraman, A. Aborting the birth of cancer. Nature 434, 829–830 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/434829a

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