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With HIV, TB, Malaria, malnutrition, typhoid, diphtheria, tetanus, and cholera to contend with, you know Africans shouldn’t be forced to worry about anything else.

Unfortunately, as Africans start to live longer thanks to improved healthcare, diseases usually associated with wealthier nations are starting to make their presence felt.  The UN Global Cancer study, released in 2002, highlighted that over 50% of cancers were occurring in developing countries.  By 2020, they expect that number to go up to 70%.

Yet, because the perception is that cancer is so anomalous in Africa, people are diagnosed very late. “80 percent of cancer victims already have late-stage incurable tumours when they are diagnosed, pointing to the need for much better detection programs,” says the report.  There are over 11 million deaths every year as a result of cancer.

Raw scientific research is speculative, difficult and frequently obscure. It can be hard for funders to justify ongoing expenditure when the results are often unclear.

On Christmas day in 1984, one such piece of blue-sky research yielded results.  Carol Greider, then a graduate student working under the direction of Elizabeth Blackburn, discovered an enzyme responsible for constructing a genetic sequence found on DNA chromosome ends, called telomeres, which protects the chromosome from damage.

This telomere sequence, maybe likened to book ends on a library shelf, holding together the genetic material packed into the chromosome.  The discovery pertains to the enzyme  which maintains these book-ends, and which  is a fundamental biological mechanism present in nearly all plants and animals.  Without it, cells would rapidly age and degrade.  They called their discovery “ telomerase”.