More evidence that red wine and aspirin protect against cancer

wespeck

Cancer is a disease of the genes. DNA mutations mess with the genetic content of a cell, enabling it to escape the normal controls that restrict its growth.

Now, a team of scientists, led by Delphine Lissa and Guido Kroemer at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, have begun exploring ways to slow or stop the formation of cells containing multiple copies of chromosomes, which they think are an essential intermediate in cancer formation.

Normal healthy cells are diploid, which means they have two copies of each chromosome, one from each parent. But during cancer formation, early malignant cells are often tetraploid, with four sets of chromosomes—the extras are either mistaken copies created in-house or genomes picked up from other cells.