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Review|Volume 2, Issue 12|pp 900—907

The DNA damage response: Balancing the scale between cancer and ageing

Elena G. Seviour1, Shiaw-Yih Lin
  • 1Department of Systems, Biology, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77054, USA
Received: September 8, 2010Accepted: December 14, 2010Published: December 16, 2010
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100248

Copyright: © 2010 Seviour et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Defects in the DNA damage response often lead to an increased susceptibility to cancer, and so the DDR presents an interesting set of novel therapeutic targets. The maintenance of genomic integrity by the DDR has also been found to be involved in the process of organismal ageing. While the removal of cells containing damaged DNA can be beneficial in the prevention of cancer, it may contribute to both normal and pathological ageing.