BackgroundHuman Papillomavirus (HPV) in cervical epithelium has been identified as the main etiological factor in the developing of Cervical Cancer (CC), which has recently become a public health problem in Mexico. This finding has allowed for the development of vaccines that help prevent this infection. In the present study, we aimed to determine the prevalence and HPV type-distribution in Mexican women with CC, high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL), low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL), and Normal cytology (N) to estimate the impact of the HPV vaccines.MethodsThe PubMed database was used to identify and review all articles that reported data on HPV prevalence in CC, precursor lesions, and normal cytology of Mexican women.ResultsA total of 8,706 samples of the tissues of Mexican women were stratified according to diagnosis as follows: 499 for CC; 364 for HSIL; 1,425 for LSIL, and 6,418 for N. According to the results, the most prevalent genotypes are the following: HPV16 (63.1%), -18 (8.6%), -58, and −31 (5%) for CC; HPV-16 (28.3%), 58 (12.6%), 18 (7.4%), and 33 (6.5%) for HSIL; HPV-16 (13.1%), 33 (7.4%), 18 (4.2%), and 58 (2.6%) for LSIL, and HPV-16 (3.4%), 33 (2.1%), 18, and 58 (1.2%) for N.ConclusionsTaken together, genotypes 58 and 31 (10%) are more common than type 18 (8.6%) in CC. Therefore, the inclusion of these two genotypes in a second-generation vaccine would provide optimal prevention of CC in Mexico.

Droplet digital PCR is the most robust method for absolute nucleic acid quantification. However, RNA is a very versatile molecule and its abundance is tissue-dependent. RNA quantification is dependent on a reference control to estimate the abundance. Additionally, in cancer, many cellular processes are deregulated which consequently affects the gene expression profiles. In this work, we performed microarray data mining of different childhood cancers and healthy controls. We selected four genes that showed no gene expression variations (PSMB6, PGGT1B, UBQLN2 and UQCR2) and four classical reference genes (ACTB, GAPDH, RPL4 and RPS18). Gene expression was validated in 40 acute lymphoblastic leukemia samples by means of droplet digital PCR. We observed that PSMB6, PGGT1B, UBQLN2 and UQCR2 were expressed ~100 times less than ACTB, GAPDH, RPL4 and RPS18. However, we observed excellent correlations among the new reference genes (p < 0.0001). We propose that PSMB6, PGGT1B, UBQLN2 and UQCR2 are housekeeping genes with low expression in childhood cancer.

BackgroundStudies of alternative mRNA splicing (AS) in health and disease have yet to yield the complete picture of protein diversity and its role in physiology and pathology. Some forms of cancer appear to be associated to certain alternative mRNA splice variants, but their role in the cancer development and outcome is unclear.MethodsWe examined AS profiles by means of whole genome exon expression microarrays (Affymetrix GeneChip 1.0) in ovarian tumors and ovarian cancer-derived cell lines, compared to healthy ovarian tissue. Alternatively spliced genes expressed predominantly in ovarian tumors and cell lines were confirmed by RT-PCR.ResultsAmong several significantly overexpressed AS genes in malignant ovarian tumors and ovarian cancer cell lines, the most significant one was that of the zinc finger protein ZNF695, with two previously unknown mRNA splice variants identified in ovarian tumors and cell lines. The identity of ZNF695 AS variants was confirmed by cloning and sequencing of the amplicons obtained from ovarian cancer tissue and cell lines.ConclusionsAlternative ZNF695 mRNA splicing could be a marker of ovarian cancer with possible implications on its pathogenesis.

Background B‐cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B‐ALL) is the most commonly diagnosed childhood malignancy worldwide and is especially common in Mexico. Additionally, the number of cases has increased in recent years. Thus, it is very important to develop molecular strategies to diagnose leukemia. The aim of this study was to investigate MYB expression and to determine its impact on the diagnosis of B‐ALL. Methods We analyzed the B‐ALL gene expression profile by microarray data mining. Bioinformatics analysis was performed to identify the genes that are overexpressed in leukemia. We determined that MYB was highly expressed in leukemia. Then, we validated MYB expression in 70 patients with B‐ALL and in 16 healthy controls (HCs) using qRT‐PCR. The results were statistically analyzed using the Kolmogorov‐Smirnov Z test, Mann‐Whitney U test, receiver operating characteristic curves, and the Youden index. Results The microarrays showed that MYB was overexpressed in B‐ALL patients with a fold change of 57.8728 and a P value of 2.56−195. MYB expression showed great variability among the patients analyzed. However, compared to the HCs, the B‐ALL patients had a P value < .0001, an area under the curve of 0.813, and a Youden index of 1.46, indicating the statistical significance. Conclusion MYB expression in B‐ALL cells could be a potential molecular marker for childhood leukemia.

B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most commonly diagnosed childhood malignancy worldwide; more than 50% of these cases are diagnosed in Mexico. Although the five-year survival rate is >80%, 30% of patients experience relapse with poor prognosis. Cancer-associated gene expression profiles have been identified in several malignancies, and some transcripts have been used to predict disease prognosis. The human transcriptome is incompletely elucidated; moreover, more than 80% of transcripts can be processed via alternative splicing (AS), which increases transcript and protein diversity. The human transcriptome is divided; coding RNA accounts for ~2%, and the remaining 98% is noncoding RNA. Noncoding RNA can undergo AS, promoting the diversity of noncoding transcripts. We designed specific primers to amplify previously reported alternative transcript variants of ZNF695 and showed that six ZNF695 transcript variants are co-expressed in cancer cell lines. The amplicons were sequenced and identified. Additionally, we analyzed the expression of these six transcript variants in bone marrow from B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients and observed that ZNF695 transcript variants one and three were the predominant variants expressed in leukemia. Moreover, our results showed the co-expression of coding and long noncoding RNA. Finally, we observed that long noncoding RNA ZNF695 expression predicted survival rates.