2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine : new avenues for cancer therapy?

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak,received this distinction “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase”.
Telomerase activity is increased in 80-90% of cancers. This leads to the development of many therapeutic strategies targeting telomerase, either by inhibition of enzyme activity or by employing a cancer vaccine approach to kill telomerase overexpressing tumour cells.
Dr Bakary Sylla, an IARC scientist specialized in viral oncogenesis, works in Dr Massimo Tommasino’s laboratory on HPV research and cancer.

Listen to Dr Bakary Sylla - RFI Interview