Cell Cycle Essay

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Regulation of Cell Cycle and Cancer

1. Introduction

All organisms are made of cells that grow by cell division. An adult human being consists of about 100000 billion cells. Dying cells are replaced by a large number of unceasingly dividing cells. A cell duplicates its chromosomes, segregates the chromosomes, and divides into two. These ordered sequences of events are called a cell cycle. 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Hartwell, Hunt, Nurse and 1998 Lasker Prizes in Basic Medical Research to Hartwell, Masui, Nurse have made important discoveries about the regulation of a cell cycle. Understanding the regulation of a cell cycle is seminal to understanding why and how cancer cells are formed. In this review, I focus on how these crucial discoveries made progress in understanding cell cycle regulation and leading to understanding cancer cell and cancer therapy.

2. Overview of Cell Cycle

Eukaryotic cells have their chromosomes contained in a nucleus. Unicellular orgasisms such as amoebas and yeast, or multi-cellular organisms such as plants and animals consist of eukaryotic cells. Human being consist of approximately 1 billion cells per gram tissue. DNA located in 23 pairs of chromosomes is contained in each cell nucleus. Schleiden in 1838 and Schwann in 1839 made very important discoveries that we consist of cells, and Remark discovered that cells prolifarate through division in 1850. Three decades ago, the molecular mechanisms that regulate the cell cycle and thus cell division was able to be identified. It has been known that these vital mechanisms are conserved through evolution and function in the same way in eukaryotic organisms.

The cell cycle generaly consists of four phases. Fir...

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... over normal proliferating cells (Figure 1) It is important to target events taking place at the same time in the cell cycle in order to boost effectiveness of the arrest and the results. In addition, it is important to characterize tumors precisely in order to clarify where the deficiencies on the cell cycle control are accrued and which of the phases have to be targeted for successful therapy. Furthermore, in the future, identification of new tumor specific isoenzymes will be necessary to characterize the cell cycle accurately and comprehend the differences between normal cells and cancer cells for the design of novel anticancer therapies (Diaz-Moralli, et al. 2013).

Table 1. Cancer therapy researches and targets. (Source: Diaz-Moralli, et al. 2013)

Bolded CDKs are most specific targets when the drugs affect more than one.

Table 1 (continued)