Expression of telomerase subunits in gastric cancer

Abstract

To detect the expression of telomerase subunits (human telomerase reverse transcriptase, human telomerase associated protein 1 and human telomerase RNA) in gastric cancer and to examine the role that different telomerase subunits play in the gastric carcinogenesis, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect telomerase subunits messenger RNA in 24 samples of gastric cancer and corresponding non-cancerous tissue. The results showed that the positive rate of hTERT mRNA from gastric cancer and corresponding non-cancerous tissues was 100% and 25%, respectively. The former was significantly higher than the latter (χ²=26.4,P<0.01). The positive rate of hTEP1 mRNA from gastric cancer and corresponding non-cancerous tissues was 100% and 91.7%, respectively and no significant difference was found between them (χ²=2.1,P>0.05). The positive rates of hTR for gastric cancer and corresponding non-cancerous tissues were both 100% and no significant difference existed between them. It is concluded that in contrast to hTEP1 and hTR, the up-regulation of hTERT mRNA expression may play a more important role in the development of gastric cancer.

Keywords

gastric cancer / human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) / human telomerase associated protein 1 (hTEP1) / human telomerase RNA (hTR)

References

[1] WrightW E, ShayJ W. The two-stage mechanism controlling cellular senescence and immortalization. Exp Gerontol, 1992, 27: 383-383

[2] HerbertB, PittsA E, BakerS I, et al. . Inhibition of human telomerase in immortal human cells leads to progressive telomere shortening and cell death. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 1999, 96: 14276-14276

[3] HahnW C, StewartS A, BrooksM W, et al. . Inhibition of telomerase limits the growth of human cancer cells. Nat Med, 1999, 5: 1164-1164

[4] MeyersonM, CounterC M, EatonE N, et al. . hEST2, the putative human telomerase catalytic subunit gene, is up-regulated in tumor cells and during immortalization. Cell, 1997, 90: 785-785

[5] LingerJ, HughesT R, ShevchenkoA, et al. . Reverse transcriptase motifs in the catalytic subunit of telomerase. Science, 1997, 276: 561-561

[6] KolquistK A, EllisenL W, CounterC M, et al. . Expression of TERT in early malignant lesion and a subset of cells in normals tissues. Nat Genet, 1998, 19: 182-182

[7] KimH R, ChristensenR, ParkN H, et al. . Elevated expression of hTERT is associated with dysplastic cell transformation during human oral carcinogenesis in situ. Clin Cancer Res, 2001, 7: 3079-3079