A scientist in the United States has apparently found a way to reverse the process of cell division.

The discovery has important implications for the treatment of cancer, birth defects and a range of other diseases and disorders.

Gary J. Gorbsky, Ph.D., a scientist with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, says un till now no one has been able to make the cell cycle go backwards.

Gorbsky says it shows that certain events in the cell cycle long assumed to be irreversible may, in fact, be reversible.

Cell division occurs millions of times each day in the human body and is essential to life itself.

Gorbsky and his OMRF colleagues were able in the laboratory to control the protein responsible for the division process, interrupt and reverse the event, sending duplicate chromosomes back to the center of the original cell, an event once thought impossible.

Gorbsky says their studies indicate that the factors pointing cells toward division can be turned and even reversed.

He says they know if the wait is too long, this does not work, which indicates there are multiple regulators in the cell division cycle.

He says they will next study the triggers that set such events in motion.

The findings may prove important to controlling the development and metastasis of certain cancers and holds promise for the prevention and treatment of birth defects and a wide variety of other conditions.

Gorbsky heads the Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology Research Program at OMRF and holds both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in biology from Princeton University.

He is also adjunct professor of Cell Biology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and a member of the OU Cancer Institute.

His research focuses on mitosis and cytokinesis, the processes involved in cell division, and he has earned international recognition for his work in the area of chromosomal movement and cell cycle control.

The current research project, done in collaboration with scientists from the University of Virginia Medical School, was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.

The research is published in the journal Nature.