Active

Chemotherapy and chromosomes: understanding the connection

Cancer types:

General cancer research

Project period:

Research institute:

The AIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology (IFOM ETS)

Award amount:

£187,335

Location:

Italy

Researcher Dr Ylli Doksani

Dr Ylli Doksani and his team in Italy are exploring a protein called telomerase which appears to have an impact on the outcomes of chemotherapy treatment. They hope to reveal new targets for therapy which could lead to successful treatment for more people. 

Hope for the future

Chemotherapy is one of the most common cancer treatments. Around 1 in 4 cancer cases in the UK are treated with some form of chemotherapy. It works by using very strong drugs to damage and kill cancer cells. Although it helps a lot of people, chemotherapy does not work for everyone or for every cancer type and sometimes cancer can become resistant to treatment over time.


Dr Ylli Doksani and his team hope they can better understand the role of the enzyme telomerase in hindering current chemotherapies. Telomerase is switched off in normal cells but is switched on in around 9 out of 10 tumours, making it a promising target for therapy. By better understanding how telomerase behaves in cancer cells, the researchers hope to find potential new therapy targets leading to new cancer cures. 

Meet the scientist

Dr Doksani loves to play soccer – he has played since he was little, and says “It's fun, it keeps me fit, it helps relieve stress and it's a great social activity!” If he had to pick, two books that he has found truly inspiring are Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman and The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb.

The science

The DNA in your cells is organised into chromosomes. At the ends of our chromosomes sit structures called telomeres which protect the chromosomes from becoming damaged. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres become slightly shorter. Eventually the telomeres become so short that the cell cannot divide and the cell dies.


Cancer cells are able to divide uncontrollably which should cause the telomeres to become very short and the cell to die.  Most cancer cells avoid dying this way though because they have a protein called telomerase that lengthens the telomeres. 


Dr Ylli Doksani believes that telomerase might be playing a role in helping cancer cells survive chemotherapy treatment and that telomerase may also be influencing other properties of cancer cells. In this project Dr Doksani and his team will investigate these ideas using a variety of techniques including a “mini-chromosome system” created by their lab to look at cell division.  

I hope that our experiments will help clinicians design better therapies that kill cancer cells without harmful side effects on the healthy tissues.

Dr Ylli Doksani

Related projects

Active Spain

Lung cancer

How do cancer cells modify white blood cells to help tumours grow?

Researchers want to help immunotherapy work for more cancer patients by understanding how cancers hijack our immune system and preventing this happening 

Researcher: Dr Andrés Hidalgo

Understanding how cancer cells modify white blood cells to help tumours grow

Active United Kingdom

General cancer research

Can we stop cancer becoming resistant to chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy can sometimes stop working, so this project is hoping to better understand why and find ways to give more, better options to cancer patients.

Researcher: Dr Andrew Beekman

Stopping cancer becoming resistant to chemotherapy

Active United Kingdom

General cancer research

Can we predict which patients will respond to immunotherapy?

This project hopes to open up exciting possibilities for personalised cancer treatment by finding how to predict which patients will respond best to treatment.

Researcher: Professor Tim Elliott

Finding ways to predict which patients will respond to immunotherapy
Share this page