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Welcome to- No time for the  intro! Everyone get in here  

we've got an important mission team!  The biggest battle we've ever been a  

part of is in this body! We're probably  protecting someone very high profile!

Yes, I put the ointment on  Mom, okay, I'm busy right now!

Here's the Intel I made everything with  

construction paper to better  express myself and the mission.

There are over 100 different cancers affecting  organs and tissues throughout the body and there  

can be lots of differences between them, like what  caused them, what type of cell they formed from,  

and how severe they are, but they all have one  thing in common. It's the thing that allows them  

to grow and spread indefinitely, and if scientists  can find a way to stop it, they could stop cancer!

Inside your cells on the ends of your DNA  are telomeres. These protect the chromosomes  

by preventing the ends from fraying or tangling,  but every time the cell divides they get shorter.  

Eventually, they become too short for the cell to  divide again, so the cell dies. This is actually  

a really useful safety feature especially for  pre-cancerous abnormal cells that could one day  

turn into cancer, but there are ways to lengthen  the telomere. The main way is with an enzyme  

called telomerase. This molecule is mostly found  in an important type of cell called a stem cell.

Stem cells need to produce new cells throughout  life and telomerase lets them keep their telomeres  

long enough so they can keep doing it, but  sometimes pre-cancerous cells mutate in a way that  

allows them to produce telomerase as well. This  is how cancer cells are able to keep dividing so  

rapidly! Uh-oh...uh we're getting outnumbered!  Triangle Bob, stop playing the new blockymon  

game and start firing the lasers! In addition  to helping the cancer spread, this constant  

reproduction also makes it hard to kill! Okay  this is getting out of hand. We have to regroup!

With each cell division, there are slight  alterations made to the genetic code that  

can help the new cells survive a cancer treatment  that would have otherwise killed it. This is why  

cancer therapies today usually work for  a while but ultimately fail the patient.

But scientists have come up with a new strategy.

Here it is, gang! The Secret weapon!

In order to prevent cancer cells  from lengthening their telomeres  

and not have to worry about some sneaky,  mutated cells able to survive treatment,  

they have come up with Whole-body Interdiction  of Lengthening of Telomeres, or WILT.

With this method, one of the genes that  make telomerase would be removed entirely,  

so no cell could use it. They would  also do the same thing for ALT,  

which is another system cancer cells  use to keep their telomeres long.

Okay! Okay! The cancer cells are dying!  This is good! Of course that means that  

stem cells would eventually die off too,  but they could be replaced every so often,  

and maybe even with engineered versions that  have longer telomeres, but still no working  

telomerase or ALT! While this strategy may  seem extreme, cancer is an extreme disease,  

claiming over 600,000 lives each year, and as  scientists knocked down death rates from more  

and more diseases of Aging, cancer will become  even more threatening if something revolutionary  

isn't done. A solution like WILT could help  finally put an end to this devastating disease!

If you want to learn more about WILT check  out our amazing sponsor of this video SENS  

Research Foundation. Click the first  Link in the description right now to  

support the incredible work that they do.  So, have you or someone you've known been  

affected by cancer? If you're comfortable  with sharing let us know your story in the  

comments below. It might help someone else  struggling. Be respectful when responding!

Click here to watch this video we did on the  

issues with getting older or click  here to watch this video on LSD!

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As always my name is Blocko, this has been  life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!