Wistar lab cracks a cancer mystery

A drug that targets telomerase would be particularly powerful because the enzyme is linked to so many types of cancer. Even so, it probably would need to be used along with conventional chemotherapy, said Richard J. Hodes, the director of the National Institute on Aging.

"Inhibiting telomerase may not kill cells immediately. It may just put them on a trajectory to end their replication capacity," said Hodes, who also studies the enzyme in his National Cancer Institute lab.

But "there will be interest in this at multiple levels," he said.

At Wistar, a colleague of Skordalakes' is intrigued by the role telomerase might play in aging. If an inactivated enzyme could limit the cell proliferation that is an unwanted hallmark of cancer, said Harold Riethman, then perhaps an activated enzyme could somehow enliven cells that degrade as we grow old.

Riethman, who was not involved with Skordalakes' study, was also impressed by the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme he found.

It resembles a doughnut.

"The DNA is like a thread. It fits right into the hole in the doughnut," said Riethman - a perfect mechanism for a biological machine whose raison d'etre is to make an identical copy of a piece of that thread and add it to the tip.

"It's elegant," he said. "You see a structure, and suddenly it becomes crystal clear how nature came up with this."