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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Cells can both survive and multiply under more stress than previously thought, shows research from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.

This was found by inhibiting the essential gene DNA polymerase alpha, or POLA1, which initiates DNA replication during cell division.

The discovery gives researchers new insights into DNA replication and may potentially be used for a new type of cancer treatment. Research Leader and Associate Professor Luis Toledo of the Center for Chromosome Stability at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine states as follows:

'If we are visionaries, I would say that we might be at the birth of a whole new set of molecules that could be used in fighting cancer', adding:

'Basically, if we turn the finding on its head, this novel strategy aims at exploiting an in-built weakness in cancer cells and make them crash while they divide.'

[...] 'All cells can be sensitive to POLA1 inhibitors, including cancer cells, and we might speculate that the strategy could be especially useful against very aggressive forms of cancer that proliferate at a high pace'.

The next step of the research group is to find more molecules that biologically inhibits the POLA1 gene and which, in combination with other substances, may be used in the treatment of cancer patients.

Journal Reference:

1. Amaia Ercilla, Jan Benada, Sampath Amitash, Gijs Zonderland, Giorgio Baldi, Kumar Somyajit, Fena Ochs, Vincenzo Costanzo, Jiri Lukas, Luis Toledo. Physiological Tolerance to ssDNA Enables Strand Uncoupling during DNA Replication. Cell Reports, 2020; 30 (7): 2416 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.01.067

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