Protein / target
Telomerase reverse transcriptase
Protein at a glance
Biological role
Template-free RNA nucleotidyltransferase activity
Primary system
Cardiovascular system
Strongest disease association
autosomal recessive dyskeratosis congenita 4
Therapeutic maturity
Clinically validated target
Druggability
Small molecule
Clinical development
2 approved
Derived from structured UniProt, Open Targets and literature data on this page.
Protein profile
Canonical identity and biological annotation from UniProt.
Function
Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein enzyme essential for the replication of chromosome termini in most eukaryotes. Active in progenitor and cancer cells. Inactive, or very low activity, in normal somatic cells. Catalytic component of the teleromerase holoenzyme complex whose main activity is the elongation of telomeres by acting as a reverse transcriptase that adds simple sequence repeats to chromosome ends by copying a template sequence within the RNA component of the enzyme. Catalyzes the RNA-dependent extension of 3'-chromosomal termini with the 6-nucleotide telomeric repeat unit, 5'-TTAGGG-3'. The catalytic cycle involves primer binding, primer extension and release of product once the template boundary has been reached or nascent product translocation followed by further extension. More active on substrates containing 2 or 3 telomeric repeats. Telomerase activity is regulated by a number of factors including telomerase complex-associated proteins, chaperones and polypeptide modifiers. Modulates Wnt signaling. Plays important roles in aging and antiapoptosis
Subcellular location
Domains and Gene Ontology detail (60)Hide
Domains & features
Gene Ontology
- Cchromosome, telomeric region
- Ccytosol
- Cmitochondrial nucleoid
- Cnuclear speck
- Cnuclear telomere cap complex
- Cnucleolus
- Cnucleoplasm
- Cnucleus
- Cplasma membrane
- CPML body
- CRNA-directed RNA polymerase complex
- Ctelomerase catalytic core complex
Biological roles
What this protein does, drawn together from its UniProt function, Gene Ontology terms and Reactome pathways.
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Transcriptional regulation
- ·transcription coactivator binding
- ·positive regulation of miRNA transcription
- ·RNA-templated transcription
- ·siRNA transcription
Apoptosis & cell death
- ·negative regulation of endothelial cell apoptotic process
- ·negative regulation of neuron apoptotic process
Metabolic enzyme activity
- ·template-free RNA nucleotidyltransferase activity
View underlying pathways (3)Hide underlying pathways
Concepts derived from UniProt GO Reactome — each badge above shows which sources supported that role.
Interaction neighbourhood
Proteins with the strongest functional or physical association. Node size and line weight reflect STRING confidence; hover or select a partner to inspect one association.
Functional and physical associations from STRING v12.0. Only associations with this protein are drawn — partner-to-partner links are not part of this evidence.
Drugs targeting this protein
Whether each drug engages this protein directly or through a complex, and how many other targets are recorded for it. Direct binders with few recorded targets are listed first.
Telomerase reverse transcriptase inhibitor
Appears in clinical studies involving anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, neoplasm, myelofibrosis
ChEMBL mechanism, action type and target identity. Open Targets clinical status and indications.
Translational evidence
Why this target matters therapeutically — disease associations, drugs in development, tractability and safety, from Open Targets.
Strongest genetic associations
Human genetic evidence — the most direct causal link between this target and a disease.
Highest overall evidence
Remaining associations by Open Targets' aggregated evidence score.
Show all associationsHide all associations
Open Targets ranks 1,712 associations for this target and we store the top 10 by aggregated score. The long tail is largely literature co-mention and RNA-expression evidence, not evidence that this target drives those diseases.
Known drugs · 2 total
anemia · myelodysplastic syndrome · neoplasm
anemia · myelodysplastic syndrome · breast cancer
Tractability
Clinical trials
Trials of drugs that target this protein — reached indirectly through those drugs, so a trial listed here studies the drug, not the protein.
Show remaining trials (3)Hide
ClinicalTrials.gov via the drug-target graph.
Forefront confidence
Our own weighting of the evidence behind each disease association. Human genetics and clinical evidence count for most; literature co-mention counts for little, because two entities sharing an abstract is not evidence that one drives the other.
This ranking differs from Open Targets' own: re-weighting moves genetically-evidenced diseases above more heavily co-mentioned ones. The evidence agreement range shows how closely the independent evidence families agree — it is not a statistical confidence interval, and nothing here is fitted to outcome data. Derived from Open Targets evidence types under Forefront weighting; the underlying per-type scores are shown above so the calculation can be checked.
What's happening now
Recent activity around this target, drawn from one canonical event stream. Every item is reached through a drug that targets this protein, so each event is news about that drug rather than about the protein directly.
- Regulatory approval
Approval: Rytelo (EMA)
- New publicationImetelstat-mediated alterations in fatty acid metabolism to induce ferroptosis as a therapeutic strategy for acute myeloid leukemia.
Objective event titles are shown unmodified; the event kind and significance line are derived from structured fields. Forefront AttentionEvent stream aggregating Europe PMC Regulatory filings ClinicalTrials.gov.