Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the intensity of telomerase activity measured on the cellular level in effusions correlates to survival time in cases of metastatic spread to the serous cavities.
Study Design: Telomere repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) in situ was applied to 46 effusions containing metastatic cancer cells.
Results: Weak telomerase activity in tumor cells was seen in 7 cases, and moderate or strong activity in 39 cases. The intensity of the enzyme activity correlated significantly to survival (Kaplan-Meier survival analysis), the median survival time being 18 days for patients with weakly positive tumors and 100 days for patients with moderately or strongly positive tumors (Kruskal-Wallis test, p = 0.021).
Conclusion: The strong relationship between telomerase activity in tumor cells in effusions and survival time has never been described before. Determination of telomerase activity on the cellular level provides a way to identify a subgroup of patients with a high probability of short survival.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000325756 | DOI Listing |
Int J Mol Sci
January 2025
Clinical Division of General Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Department of Anesthesia, Genera Intensive Care and Pain Therapy, Medical University Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Drug development for human disease relies on preclinical model systems such as human cell cultures and animal experiments before therapeutic treatments can ultimately be tested on humans in clinical studies. We here describe the generation of a novel human cell line (HLMVEC/SVTERT289) that we generated by transfection of microvascular endothelial cells from healthy donor lung tissue with the catalytic domain of telomerase and the SV40 large T/small t-antigen. These cells exhibited satisfactory growth characteristics and largely maintained their native characteristics, including morphology, cell surface marker expression, angiogenic potential and the protein composition of secreted extracellular vesicles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenes (Basel)
January 2025
Department of Chemistry, The RNA Institute, University at Albany, SUNY, 1400 Washington Ave Extension, Albany, NY 12222, USA.
The notion of RNA-based therapeutics has gained wide attractions in both academic and commercial institutions. RNA is a polymer of nucleic acids that has been proven to be impressively versatile, dating to its hypothesized RNA World origins, evidenced by its enzymatic roles in facilitating DNA replication, mRNA decay, and protein synthesis. This is underscored through the activities of riboswitches, spliceosomes, ribosomes, and telomerases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCancers (Basel)
January 2025
Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, ISA2015, Tampa, FL 33620, USA.
Background/objectives: As cells divide, telomeres shorten through a phenomenon known as telomere attrition, which leads to unavoidable senescence of cells. Unprotected DNA exponentially increases the odds of mutations, which can evolve into premature aging disorders and tumorigenesis. There has been growing academic and clinical interest in exploring this duality and developing optimal therapeutic strategies to combat telomere attrition in aging and cellular immortality in cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Cellular and Molecular Research Center, Gerash University of Medical Sciences, Gerash, Iran.
This study investigates the interrelationship between human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and ferroptosis in precursor-B (pre-B) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), specifically examining how hTERT modulation affects ferroptotic cell death pathways. Given that hTERT overexpression characterizes various cancer phenotypes and elevated telomerase activity is observed in early-stage and relapsed ALL, we investigated the molecular mechanisms linking hTERT regulation and ferroptosis in leukemia cells. The experimental design employed Nalm-6 and REH cell lines under three distinct conditions: curcumin treatment, hTERT siRNA knockdown, and their combination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Phys Chem B
January 2025
College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, P. R. China.
Under conditions that are close to the real cellular environment, the human telomeric single-stranded overhang (∼200 nt) consisting of tens of TTAGGG repeats tends to form higher order structures of multiple G-quadruplex (G4) blocks. On account of the higher biological relevance of higher order G4 structures, ligand compounds binding to higher order G4 are significant for the drug design toward inhibiting telomerase activity. Here, we study the interaction between a cationic porphyrin derivative, 5,10,15,20-tetra{4-[2-(1-methyl-1-piperidinyl)propoxy]phenyl}porphyrin (T4), and a human telomeric G4-dimer (AG(TAG)) in the mimic intracellular molecularly crowded environment (PEG as a crowding agent) and K or Na solution (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!