Cancer hijacks natural cell process called ‘nonsense-mediated decay’

Cancer tumours manipulate a natural cell process to promote their survival suggesting that controlling this mechanism could halt the progress of the disease, according to new research published in Nature Communications. Nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) is a natural physiological process that provides cells with the ability to detect DNA errors called nonsense mutations. It also enables these cells to eliminate the mutated message (decay) that comes from these faulty genes, before they can be translated into proteins that can cause disease formation. NMD is known among the medical community for the role it plays in the development of genetic diseases such…