'Are telomeres the key to aging and cancer - lessons learned from zebrafish' - Seminar

Age is the strongest carcinogen. Telomere shortening is a recognized marker of human aging and is correlated with age-related diseases such as cancer.

Guest speaker, as part of the Interdisciplinary Medicine & Health Seminars: Miguel Godinho Ferreira (Institute for Research in Cancer and Aging, Nice, France.)

Miguel Godinho Ferreira will discuss his studies on telomere shortening playing a causative role in tumorigenesis. This link has been mostly investigated using mice that have long telomeres. Interestingly, zebrafish is a vertebrate model that possesses human-like short telomeres that progressively decline with age, like in humans. He will show that zebrafish is an excellent model to unravel the underlying relationship between telomere shortening, tissue regeneration, aging and disease. His ground-breaking studies have changed our knowledge on how telomere attrition contributes to cellular senescence, organ dysfunction and disease.