The Complexities of Cancer

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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 »

This ScienCentral article and video is a great example of the way in which cancer research is driving our understanding of human biochemistry. What we call cancer is, in essence, a laundry list of runaway failure modes in the very complex biochemical machinery within our cells. If you want to prevent a machine from breaking down, or repair a failure in process, it helps to have the relevant blueprints to hand. By the time cancer is reduced to the status of costly but non-fatal chronic condition - perhaps as soon as 2015, at least for the most common classes of cancer - if seem likely that our understanding of cellular biochemistry will be nearly complete. If cancer research produces blueprints for human biochemistry, scientific anti-aging research - and every other field of modern medicine - will certainly run with them.

Link: http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392841