A report recently released by the American Cancer Society states that “approximately 1,685,210 new cases of cancer are expected to be diagnosed in 2016.” However, some new studies may have found the light at the end of the tunnel, telomeres. People with dyskeratosis congenita (as described above) have a 1000 times greater risk of oral cancer. This theory of the link between telomere length and cancer arose in the 1990s but has only recently become demonstrable. In most cancer cases it was shown that many cells had critically shorter telomere length leading to unstable chromosomes. When a cell becomes cancerous, its chromosomes become unstable and uncontrollable. Cells continue to divide until the telomeres become very short, but what differentiates cancer cells from healthy ones is telomerase, which will maintain the length of the cells' telomeres and prevent their death. Scientists believe that if they were able to measure telomere length and block telomerase, they could predict and stop the growth of cancer cells. In a recent experiment on mice with breast cancer, scientists were able to block telomerase and stop the cancer from growing. However, it had side effects such as reduced fertility, wound healing, and production of blood cells and immune system cells (are telomeres the key to aging and cancer?). Targeting telomerase may be the answer we are looking for, but more research is needed to further establish the exact roles