Page 147test but has now been developed as a blood test.
Fetal and baby cells contain lots of Telomerase, which helps to keep DNA
healthy; eventually we all lose it. So the appearance of more Telomerase in
the blood in later life is highly suggestive of active cancer, since malignant cells
contain 10- 20 times normal levels. They can create Telomerase.
Your practitioner can use the test to monitor the suppression of cancer activity
(or not). However there may be some confusion, due to the fact that simple
infections may send levels up. Still, it is useful by making comparisons and,
although high levels may be confusing, levels which have dropped to nil are
indicative of success against the tumor.
Important points: when first seen, a cancer patient may have quite low
Telomerase levels in the blood. But that’s not good. It means the cancer cells are
cloaking themselves and hiding from the immune system.
Also, when natural treatments are commenced, Telomerase levels will often go
sky high. This frightens patients. But is actually a good sign, that the cancer cells
are being destroyed and broken up, releasing the Telomerase.
It might be possible to tame cancer by attacking it in this telomerase weak link.
The trouble is studies in human cancer cells have indicated that disrupting
telomerase as a means of halting cancer cell replication or inducing cell suicide
would require an almost complete loss of normal telomerase activity. And this
would require either swamping the enzyme with an overwhelming amount of
mutant telomerase or finding a sufficiently potent drug to completely inhibit the
enzyme.
Nobody can guess the implications if that.
But UCSF researchers report that they were able to slow the growth of human
cancer cells - or cause them to commit suicide altogether -- by creating just a
miniscule mutation in the telomerase enzyme.
By inserting a tiny mutation in the gene coding for a small but critical portion
of the telomerase enzyme caused it to not work, which prompted a dramatic
response from cancer cells.
“We were quite surprised at how strong the effect was,” says the senior author
of the study, Elizabeth Blackburn, UCSF professor of biochemistry and biophysics.
“Cancer cells are tough. They usually ignore the signals that tell them to commit
suicide. But by spiking the telomerase enzyme with just a little bad telomerase