A Study of Telomeres-Targeting Anticancer Drugs' Effectiveness through Comparative Cancer Mortality and Incidence Rates Analysis

The Consequences of shrinking chromosomes’ end-caps, known as telomeres- in cancer development is only partially understood. One thing that is certain, however, is that as tissue cells age and these end-caps start shrinking, telomerase enzyme production by the affected cells increases in order to repair these telomeres. The problem with this process is that it makes these cells immortal, making it impossible to maintain or renew themselves in a natural fashion. While scientists and researchers have long believed longer telomeres are associated with good health, some recent studies indicate that might not be the case. Scientists at the University of California in San Francisco have shown that Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase, an enzyme that maintains telomeres and hence protects cells from aging, also plays a significant role in the development of brain cancer known as gliomas. This discovery is one of the major challenges that face scientists and researchers in designing effective drugs against cancer. After more than four decades of telomeres research, leading to a belief that longer telomeres are important for good overall health and in protecting cells from senescence, this belief turns out to be only partially true or completely mistaken for certain parts of the body. This discovery is quiet important in the cancer fight and leads to needed rethinking of cancer development mechanisms. Does each tissue need a more specialized drug for that specific tissue, and what approach can be taken if such is true? Should more efforts and resources be directed to prevention or treating and curing cancer diseases? The United States population’s 10-year cancer mortality and incidence rates were compared with those of two states California and Utah with lowest cancer incidence rates and two states Kentucky and West Virginia with highest incidence rates in the country. The use of two states were used due to their lowest cancer incidence rates while two were used as states with highest cancer incidences in the country. Overall, the goal in this selection of states on both ends of the spectrums of cancer incidence rates together with the US population’s cancer incidence rates is to provide a representative sample to study the environmental mutagenic-inducing factors’ influence in contrast to the mortality hindrance factor of anticancer drugs. Most anticancer drugs designed and used in connection with completion of Human Genome Project (HGP) in 2003 will be discussed. The HGP had among its main three future goals the designing of more robust and efficient drugs, vaccines and therapies for cancer prevention or elimination. Analyzing the success of the anticancer drugs that were FDA-approved from 2007 to 2011 has been emphasized in this research to determine if these telomeres-targeting anticancer drugs have been successful in slowing or countering cancer disease rates. Cancer mortality rates from 2002 to 2006-before more efficient anticancer drugs were approved-are contrasted with mortality rates from 2007 to 2011. This research was unable to conclusively establish a clear role of anticancer drugs in cancer mortality rates decline in the US population by replicating their clinical trials’ effectiveness through expected mortality rates reduction. Meanwhile, smoking and tobacco use as an environmental mutagenic factor in lung and bronchus cancer incidence rates yielded conclusive research results in both sexes. The Pearson correlation coefficient calculation ranged from 0.5414 to 0.781 for the US population and three out of four selected states. It was also found that smoking and tobacco use might explain 29 to 60 percent of the lungs and bronchus cancer incidence rates in the US population and three out of four selected states that were studied