WILT: taking cancer seriously enough to really cure it

Google Tech Talks June 29, 2007 ABSTRACT The intrinsic genetic instability of cancer cells makes age-related cancers harder to postpone or treat than any other aspect of aging. Any therapy that a cancer can resist by activating or inactivating specific genes is unlikely to succeed long-term, because pre-existing cancer cells with the necessary gene expression pattern will withstand the therapy and proliferate. WILT (Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres) seeks to pre-empt this problem by deleting from as many of our cells as possible the genes needed for telomere elongation. Cancers lacking these genes can never reach a life-threatening stage by altering gene expression, only by...