Not all cancers are due to genetic damage, say researchers in the UK. Some forms of the disease may be caused by older cells circumventing the switch that directs them to stop growing, which suggests cancers later in life may be due to the way our cells age.
The researchers, from the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, Scotland, published their results in the journal Nature Cell Biology.
They came to their conclusion when they discovered that human cells growing in their lab that were approaching the end of their lifecycle started to lose control over methylation - the process of "chemically tagging" DNA.
Patterns of this same process were observed in cancer cells, the team says.
Explaining that aging cells go through a process of senescence - when the cells stop multiplying and enter a more dormant state - the researchers say that changes in chemical tagging could prompt cells to become cancerous if they bypass the senescence process and "wake up."
Prof. Peter Adams, study author and Cancer Research UK scientist, says:
"While aging is the biggest single risk factor for most cancers, we have a very poor understanding as to why this is. In this study we have shown that aging cells differ greatly in their behavior from normal cells."
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