Scientists discover innate tumor suppression mechanism

The p53 gene is one of the most important in the human genome: the only role of the p53 protein that this gene encodes is to sense when a tumor is forming and to kill it. While the gene was discovered more than four decades ago, researchers have so far been unsuccessful at determining exactly how it works. Now, in a recent study published in Cancer Discovery, researchers at The Wistar Institute have uncovered a key mechanism as to how p53 suppresses tumors.