Agents that target telomerase and telomeres

Eric Raymond, Daekyu Sun, Shih Fong Chen, Bradford Windle, Daniel D. Von Hoff

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

87 Scopus citations

Abstract

Telomeres are guanine-rich regions that are located at the ends of chromosomes and are essential for preventing aberrant recombination and protecting against exonucleolytic DNA degradation. Telomeres are maintained by telomerase, an RNA-dependent DNA polymerase. Because telomerase is known to be expressed in tumor cells, which concurrently have short telomeres, and not in most somatic cells, which usually have long telomeres, telomerase and telomere structures have been recently proposed as attractive targets for the discovery of new anticancer agents. The most exciting current strategies are aimed at specifically designing new drugs that target telomerase or telomeres and new models have been formulated to study the biological effects of inhibitors of telomerase and telomeres both in vitro and in vivo.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)583-591
Number of pages9
JournalCurrent Opinion in Biotechnology
Volume7
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1996
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biotechnology
  • Bioengineering
  • Biomedical Engineering

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