Human est1 gene

A nucleic acid as claimed in any one of the preceding claims encoding for a fragment of said protein characterised in that it is a C-terminally truncated fragment of said protein.

A nucleic acid as claimed in any one of the preceding claims characterised in that it encodes for a protein as described in any one of the preceding claims conjugated to other proteins, eg chromosome end capping proteins or peptides eg. such as cdc13, as fusion proteins.

An isolated, enriched, purified or recombinantly produced protein comprising an amino acid sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID No 2, SEQ ID No 4, SEQ ID no 5 and SEQ ID No 6 or a part of any of these, the protein or part thereof being effective to modulate the activity of telomerase in tumour cells in vivo or the ability of hTERT (human EST2) to extend telomere length in vitro.

A PCR primers comprising from 10 to 30 contiguous bases of the sequence SEQ ID No 1 or SEQ ID No 3 or complementary sequence thereto.

An oligonucleotide probe comprising from 15 to the full length contiguous sequence of SEQ ID No 1 or SEQ ID No 3 or complementary sequence thereto.