Nature：衰老与癌症的关系综述

生物谷

生物谷报道：癌细胞的恒久生命与导致人死亡的衰老过程看起来似乎是相对立的。但令人吃惊的是，癌细胞和衰老过程的生物学基础却是相合的。基因组不稳定、端粒功能和自噬作用等在关于癌症和衰老的论文中都能见到。研究人员已经在肿瘤发生与细胞衰老之间发现了联系。线粒体代谢对这两个现象来说都是中心内容。Finkel等人发表在最新一期《自然》杂志上的一篇综述，从历史角度向我们介绍了癌症和衰老的共同生物学基础：从第一次意识到人类癌细胞—HeLa细胞—在培养中有可能继续分裂一直谈到系统生物学方法的问世。

FIGURE 1. The potential interplay between stem cells, stress, ageing and cancer.

During normal ageing, stem cells accumulate damage and subsequent stress-dependent changes (for example, de-repression of the CDKN2a (INK4a/ARF) locus or telomere shortening). This leads to the increasing abundance of senescent cells (large blue cells) within differentiated tissues. Incipient tumours, arising directly from stem cells or from more committed cells, undergo rapid proliferation (small red cells). These pre-malignant tumour cells rapidly accumulate damage, in part owing to the presence of oncogenes, leading to a higher proportion of tumour cells becoming senescent (small blue cells). Tumour progression to full malignancy is favoured when tumour cells acquire mutations that impair the senescence program (for example, mutations in Trp53 or CDKN2a).