Massive death in cancer cells deprived of HDAC5

"These results show that HDAC5 does indeed play a role in maintaining the structure of telomeres in cancer cells," says the researcher. If inhibiting this enzyme affects the telomeres of cancer cells, an obvious question comes to mind: “Are chemotherapeutic agents, which attack the DNA molecule, more effective on cancer cells with shortened telomeres?” 

To test this hypothesis, the scientists used cancer cells with long telomeres that seemed to be resistant to agents used in chemotherapy. "Cancer cells that are deprived of HDAC5 are much more sensitive to chemotherapeutic agents and die much more," indicates Denis Mottet. "These results mean that we can propose promising new combined strategies for the cancer-fighting arsenal." This study was published in The FASEB Journal, an American scientific journal, and was selected by its editorial board as the discovery of the month in September 2013 because of its innovative and promising research.

As Denis Mottet and his colleagues have shown, the control mechanisms of telomeres in cancer cells represent an important new cancer treatment possibility, since reducing the length of telomeres should take eliminate cancer cell immortality. And even beyond applications in cancer research, given that telomeres are directly related to cellular ageing, understanding the relationship between HDAC and telomeres could have an important impact in a number of clinical fields such as age-related illnesses.

(1) Clara Lopes Novo, Catherine Polese, Nicolas Matheus, Anabelle Decottignies, Arturo Londono-Vallejo, Vincent Castronovo, and Denis Mottet. A new role for histone deacetylase 5 in the maintenance of long telomeres. FASEB J, September 2013, doi:10.1096/fj.12-224204