Télomères et télomérase comme cibles thérapeutiques dans le traitement du cancer

Telomeres, the extremities of chromosomes, are shortened at each cell division leading eventually to the senescence of the cell. In order to survive a great number of cell divisions cancer cells must acquire the capacity to maintain their telomeres. Therefore, telomeres and telomerase are interesting targets in the development of new anticancer drugs. In this review, we discuss the principal limitations of the many strategies that have been explored to date and focus on some of the technical or biomedical challenges that must be overcome before clinical applications can be proposed. One of the major challenges is to identify targets that can impeach tumor cells to maintain their telomere lengths, and avoid telomere degradation in normal cells. Nevertheless, the results reported from preclinical experiments suggest a moderate optimism as to see clinical applications in a near future and they encourage a sustained effort in anti-telomere and anti-telomerase research.