Significance of Telomerase Activity as the Prognostic Factor of Human Bladder Cancer

Chung, Jae Min; Lee, Sang Don; Kim, Chul Min

Abstract

PURPOSE: Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein involved in maintaining telomere length in stem cells and immortal or actively dividing cells. There is a controversy about the correlation between telomerase activity and prognostic factors of the human bladder cancer. We studied to evaluate the relationship between telomerase activity and prognostic factors of the human bladder cancer. METERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-one bladder cancer tissue and 5 normal bladder tissue around bladder cancer tissue in 5 cystectomized pt were aseptically obtained from radical cystectomy or transurethral resection of bladder cancer in thirty-one cases of human bladder cancer. Telomerase activity was analyzed using PCR-based telomeric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay individually. Telomerase activity was quantitated with a phosphoimager (GS525 Molecular Imager System, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, California, USA). We compared telomerase activity with clinicopathological characteristics in human bladder cancer such as stage, grade, age, multiplicity in superficial cancer and lymph node involvement.
RESULTS
The telomerase activity was detected in 28 of 31 (90.3%) cases of human bladder cancer, but not detected in all of normal bladder tissues. There was no statistical correlation between telomerase activity and clinicopathological features such as stage, grade, multiplicity in superficial cancer, lymph node involvement except age of patient.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that the telomerase activity may play in a carcinogenesis of the human bladder cancer, but may not play in the index of prognostic factors of human bladder cancer.