by Melissa Marino | Posted on Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011 — 12:25 PM
A new study led by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researcher David Gius now shows how a deficiency in this aging-associated protein may set the stage for these tumors to develop.
The findings, published in Molecular Cell, provide information that could assist in the screening, prevention and treatment of these common age-related cancers.
While the young are certainly not spared cancer’s wrath, cancer is primarily a disease of aging, with the majority of cases occurring in people over 50.
However, the biological processes that underlie this association are not clear.
“The connection between aging and cancer is one of the most established phenomena in cancer research,” said Gius, associate professor of cancer biology, pediatrics and radiation oncology. “The problem to address this clinically significant question is that this field lacks in vivo models to study this.”