The Molecular link between Cancer and Aging

Introduction

Recent experimental evidences suggest that cancer progression and aging could be linked at the cellular level by the abnormal function of some signalling pathways, cellular systems in charge of identifying and processing the external signals received by the cell. Those mechanisms protect our cells against external or internal insults that damage their genetic material. Leaded by the protein p53, the so-called DNA damage master controller, these processes repair the inflicted DNA damage but also take additional measures to avoid these genetic errors to be transferred to new cells. Depending on the severity of the damage, p53 can trigger a transient/permanent stop of cell replication or the programmed cellular death (apoptosis) in a strategy to kill some damaged cells but save the whole organism. Imbalance between these processes is very often present in different phases of cancer progression, but also is one of the sources of aging in the organism.