Genomic instability is associated with lack of telomerase activation in ovarian cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Malignant cells are capable of an unlimited number of cell divisions, either through production of telomerase, or through the alternate lengthening of telomere (ALT) mechanism. Yeast cells with genomic instability have been shown to survive in the absence of telomerase by increased recombination events. We hypothesized that ovarian cancers with high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) are more likely to lack telomerase activation. Methods We examined 104 invasive ovarian cancers for MSI with 6 microsatellite markers (BAT25, BAT26, D5S346, D2S123, D17S250, and NME1). Telomerase activity was determined with ELISA, and its subunits human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and human telomerase RNA (hTR) by RT-PCR. Statistical analysis was performed with Chi-square and p