Study Of Telomerase Activity And Its Subunits In Epithelial Ovarian Tumors

Objective This study is designed to investigate the role of telomerase and its subunits in the development of epithelial ovarian carcinoma, to ascertain the co-relationship between telomerase activity and the expression of each subunit,and to explore the relationship between the expression of telomerase activity and clinical-pathological factors of ovarian tumors. Methods Sixty-six epithelial ovarian tumors and ten normal ovarian tissues were detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) for telomerase subunits,and telomerase repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay was used to detect part of the samples,forty-five epithelial ovarian tumors and nine ovarian tissues for telomerase activity. Results The positive rates of epithelial ovarian carcinomas and borderline ovarian rumors were 80% and 71.43% respectively, but none of the benign ovarian tumors and normal ovarian tissues were detected telomerase activity. The frequency of telomerase activity in ovarian carcinomas and borderline ovarian tumors was significantly higher than that in benign and normal tissues. It is found that hTR and TPlmRNA are widely expressed in each group of the tissues, while hTERTmRNA is mainly expressed in ovarian carcinomas and borderline ovarian tumors, and there is no significant difference between these two groups ,which suggests that hTERTmRNA may play a critical role in the activation of telomerase. Statistics study showed that there is a strong correlation between the subunit hTERT and telomerase activity (P<0.001), whereas hTR and TP1 expression showed no correlation with telomerase activation. No relationship was found between the expression of telomerase activity and the clinical factors. Conclusion Telomerase activation might contribute to the progression of ovarian carcinoma, and because hTERTexpression parallels to telomerase activity, the hTERT mRNA may play a critical role in activation of telomerase, and hTERT niRNA may be not only a useful diagnostic director but also a promising target for gene therapy in ovarian carcinoma.