A new ‘toolbox’ for repairing damaged DNA that can lead to ageing, cancer and motor neurone disease (MND) has been discovered by researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.

Published in Nature communicationthe research shows that a protein called TEX264, along with other enzymes, can recognize and “eat” toxic proteins that can attach to DNA and cause it to be damaged. An accumulation of broken, damaged DNA can cause cellular aging, cancer and neurological diseases such as MND.

Until now, ways to repair this type of DNA damage have been poorly understood, but scientists hope to harness this new repair toolkit of proteins to protect us from aging, cancer and neurological diseases.

The findings may also have implications for chemotherapy, which deliberately causes DNA breaks when trying to kill cancer cells. Researchers believe that targeting the TEX264 protein may offer a new way to treat cancer.

“Failure to fix DNA breaks in our genome could affect our ability to enjoy a healthy life in old age, as well as make us vulnerable to neurological diseases such as Motor Neurone Disease (MND). We hope that by understanding how our cells repair DNA breaks, we can help meet some of these challenges, as well as explore new ways to treat cancer in the future, says Professor Sherif El-Khamisy, co-founder and Deputy Director of Cancer. Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield.

Professor Kristijan Ramadan from the University of Oxford, who led the research, said: “Our discovery of TEX264, a protein that forms the specialized machinery for digesting toxic proteins from our DNA, significantly changes the current understanding of how cells repair the genome. and so protect us from accelerated aging, cancer and neurodegeneration I believe this discovery has great potential for cancer therapy in the future and we are already continuing our research in this direction.

Professor Ramadan added, “I am very proud of my research team who initially discovered the involvement of TEX264 in DNA repair.”

Provided by the University of Sheffield