8:24am Thursday 18th February 2010
A BREAKTHROUGH by North-East scientists could provide the next step in fighting age-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
Scientists from Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing and Health have been investigating why cells age.
The results should help scientists understand ageing and how cancer cells escape ageing to wreak their destructive power.
Published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, the research identifies how the body reacts to internal signals that a cell is in trouble because of damage to its DNA by stopping the cell’s ability to divide.
It results in loss of the cell’s capacity to support tissue regeneration and repair, which gradually leads to the physical signs of ageing, as more and more cells suffer the same fate. The damaged cell is also stopped from becoming cancerous.
Professor Thomas von Zglinicki, who led the research, said: “There are some real possibilities for this research.
The next stage would be to develop drugs which can be used to target these molecules to help us combat many age-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, where cell ageing plays an important part.”
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