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Cancer

Ins and outs of tumour control

Nature volume 454, pages 586–587 (2008)Cite this article

When a potentially dangerous cell can't be repaired, it must be either stopped or killed. Premature senescence of cancerous cells is one such 'stop' mechanism, in which immune mediators play an unexpected part.

Various mutations can make normal mammalian cells cancerous. Luckily, several built-in mechanisms that inhibit tumour formation are in place. For example, a host of molecular factors, including tumour-suppressor proteins, blunt the accumulation of potentially dangerous cells by promoting either cellular senescence or apoptosis (programmed cell death)1. But tumour suppressors are neither infallible nor work in isolation. So the quest is on for other natural anticancer agents. In papers published in Cell, Kuilman et al.2 and Acosta et al.3 describe the role of several secreted immune mediators in promoting cellular senescence in response to oncogene activation.

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Figure 1: Intracellular and secreted proteins control tumour development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Maria S. Soengas is in the Melanoma Group, Molecular Pathology Programme, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Madrid 28029, Spain. msoengas@cnio.es ,

    Maria S. Soengas

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  1. Maria S. Soengas
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Soengas, M. Ins and outs of tumour control. Nature 454, 586–587 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454586a

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