Link Between Cancer Development and DNA Damage During Aging Process Discovered
The National Cancer Institute in the United States indicates that the average age of cancer onset is 66 years and that more than half of new cases in the United Kingdom are diagnosed in people over 70 years of age. According to studies, this relationship between cancer and age is not just a coincidence and the risk of the disease increases with age. Professor Carlos Frederico Menck, from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB) at the University of São Paulo (USP), explains that the cause is related to damage to the DNA of our cells.
DNA lesions
The most prevalent idea, according to the expert, that cancer is correlated with the aging process is the accumulation of DNA lesions as a person lives. Unlike mutations, as occurs in cancer, lesions are changes in the structure of the cells’ genetic material. “The oxygen we breathe is considered one of the biggest causes of DNA damage. You have the possibility of having oxidative stress, as if the DNA molecule and the cell were oxidizing”, he adds.
The professor explains that these injuries cause transcriptional stress, the process of RNA synthesis from DNA, and this harms the cell, which can lead to the death of important cells in the body’s recovery, such as stem cells. In addition to endogenous injuries, related to the life process, Menck also warns that cigarettes, atmospheric pollution, excessive alcohol — generating aldehydes — and chronic inflammation can be other causes of damage to the genetic material of cells.
Relationship with cancer
“The accumulation of these lesions does not mean that you will necessarily have cancer. This plays an important role in terms of aging, but the lesions themselves can generate changes in the sequence of DNA bases, mutations, considered the main causes of cancer formation, so the correlation is direct”, says the professor. He further adds that mutations can develop a tumor cell, causing the tumor through its replication.
“We have a defense, the immune system is defending us all the time from tumors, but, over time, some cells manage to escape this immunological control and develop the tumor, so it is a temporal issue that increases violently with age. age”, he reports. Menck also says that a point that confirms this relationship between cancer and DNA lesions are rare genetic diseases, studied by the professor, which impair the repair of the genetic material of those affected, causing cancer even at an early age.
Regarding cancer treatment, the professor mentions chemotherapy, which has existed since the 1960s and 1970s, which damages the DNA of the tumor cell, and comments on some more recent advances in science and medicine, such as the emergence of immunotherapy, in which the The brake on the immune system is reduced, keeping it activated to fight the tumor cell at various points, or CAR-T gene therapy, which makes a person’s own T lymphocyte recognize and attack the tumor cell. “This type of treatment is still in its infancy, but it gives us some hope; however, it depends on the type of tumor, what state it is in and what it can do. But immunotherapy is already a reality, for some tumors it has worked quite well”, he concludes.