PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thanks to modern medicine, we can expect to live longer but our prospects of a happy, healthy old age are still stalked by the twin spectres of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. At first glance, these seem to have little in common – cancer is a disease where cells divide out of control, in contrast to the death of terminally differentiated neurons that characterises the neurodegenerative diseases. But the more that is learned about the signaling pathways that control cell division, differentiation, neuronal plasticity and cell death, the more apparent is the overlap between the two types of disease. Many of the findings, that have been presented at the 25th Fondation Ipsen Colloque Médecine et Recherche in the Alzheimer’s Disease series, offer new routes into the treatment of both cancerous and neurodegenerative conditions. This meeting has emphasized just how fruitful the intersection of the two research fields will become in the coming years.
