Longevity Genes and Cancer

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

As reported by the New Scientist, work in lower animals continues to increase our understanding of the fundamental links between aging and cancer: "The authors speculate that signalling pathways that control longevity may have coevolved with tumour-suppressive mechanisms. ... Intuitively it all makes sense. We see this nice, clear genetic link between the longevity and tumour pathways. Presumably this is at least partially responsible for making cancer an age-related disease. ... C. elegans shares many tumour-related genes with mammals, including the ones investigated in this study ... It's one more element that makes you think that the aging genes that we discover and study in worms might be worth studying in vertebrates."

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9777-longevity-genes-fight-cancer-at-its-source-.html