Elevation of telomerase activity positively correlates to poor prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Prognostic value of hTERT mRNA expression in surgical samples of lung cancer patients: the European Early Lung Cancer Project

“…In line with previous studies we found that both the proportion of hTERT-positive samples and hTERT mRNA levels were higher in tumour samples than in paired normal lung samples of lung cancer patients (19,20,22,(26)(27)(28)(29)(30). However, despite the fact that we examined material of a large cohort of patients and found an association between clinical stage and hTERT mRNA positivity in tumour tissue, we were unable to confirm a previously reported association between RT-PCR detected elevated hTERT mRNA levels of tumour samples and a decreased disease-free survival (19,20,22).…”

“…Studies on the potentially prognostic value of telomerase activity or hTERT expression in tumours of surgically treated lung cancer patients have, however, yielded conflicting results (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32). The possibility that the level of hTERT mRNA and telomerase activity, rather than detectability of these parameters could have a predictive value might be one of the reasons for these discordant findings.…”

“…In patients with surgically-treated early-stage lung cancer a correlation has been found between a poor prognosis and detection in tumour tissue of either elevated hTERT expression [by RT-PCR (19)(20)(21)(22), immunohistochemistry (23) or ISH (24,25)] or telomerase activity (26)(27)(28)(29). However, data on this topic are not consistent since other studies failed to reveal a correlation between hTERT expression and (diseasefree) survival (28,30,31).…”

Predictive value of telomerase reverse transcriptase expression in patients with high risk superficial bladder cancer treated with adjuvant BCG immunotherapy

“…Furthermore, in the case of hTERT, the association between nucleolar immunohistochemical staining and telomerase activity and hTERT mRNA expression has been well documented and validated (Etheridge et al 2002;Yang et al 2002). Thirdly, hTERT activity has been shown to provide prognostic and predictive information in a variety of epithelial neoplasms including gastric, renal, hepatocellular, lung and colon cancers (Domont et al 2005;Smith et al 2004;Usselmann et al 2001;Fujioka et al 2000;Chen et al 2006;Kobayashi et al 2001). In brief, telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein reverse transcriptase that uses its internal RNA moiety as a template for elongation of telomeres (Blackburn 1991).…”

Telomeres: Prognostic markers for solid tumors

“…44 It is thus somewhat surprising that research on telomeres in lung cancer specimens is relatively rare. While telomerase expression and activity have been recognized as important contributors to the malignant phenotype in lung epithelial cells, and have been proposed to be of potential prognostic value, 48 reports on the use of telomeres to predict lung cancer progression are scarce. Using telomere length measurements by the TRF method, Shirotani et al investigated the relationship between telomere length and various characteristics of tumor cells in 46 lung cancer specimens comprising 40 primary and 6 metastatic lesions.…”