Department of Molecular Neuroscience, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS Genet. 2010 Dec 23;6(12):e1001257. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001257.
Cancer and neurodegeneration are often thought of as disease mechanisms at opposite ends of a spectrum; one due to enhanced resistance to cell death and the other due to premature cell death. There is now accumulating evidence to link these two disparate processes. An increasing number of genetic studies add weight to epidemiological evidence suggesting that sufferers of a neurodegenerative disorder have a reduced incidence for most cancers, but an increased risk for other cancers. Many of the genes associated with either cancer and/or neurodegeneration play a central role in cell cycle control, DNA repair, and kinase signalling. However, the links between these two families of diseases remain to be proven. In this review, we discuss recent and sometimes as yet incomplete genetic discoveries that highlight the overlap of molecular pathways implicated in cancer and neurodegeneration.
癌症和神经退行性疾病通常被认为是处于两个极端的疾病机制；一个是由于增强的抗细胞死亡能力，另一个是由于过早的细胞死亡。现在有越来越多的证据将这两个截然不同的过程联系起来。越来越多的遗传研究增加了流行病学证据的权重，表明神经退行性疾病患者的大多数癌症发病率降低，但其他癌症的发病率增加。许多与癌症和/或神经退行性疾病相关的基因在细胞周期控制、DNA 修复和激酶信号转导中发挥核心作用。然而，这两种疾病之间的联系仍有待证实。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了最近的遗传发现，有时甚至是尚未完成的遗传发现，这些发现强调了癌症和神经退行性疾病中涉及的分子途径的重叠。
