Abstract P3-04-01: Telomere G-tail length correlates with the presence of breast cancer

Abstract

Background The telomere G-tail, located at the terminal 3’-end, plays an important role in the maintenance of chromosome stability. Telomere G-tail length has been shown to be related to the presence of various cancers; however, the association between telomere G-tail length and breast cancer has remained unclear. Methods We measured the length of the leukocyte telomere G-tail using the hybridization protection assay, which has the advantages of being simple to perform, accurate and highly sensitive for G-tails as short as 20 nucleotides. The association between telomere G-tail length and presence of breast cancer was estimated by comparing breast cancer patients (n=70) and cancer-free individuals (n=83). We recruited cStage I-III breast cancer patients who underwent surgery between November 2016 and December 2017 at Hiroshima University Hospital. Cancer-free individuals included age-matched female individuals with no previous or current history of any cancer. Results The median telomere G-tail length was significantly shorter in breast cancer patients (11,886.70 ± 2,008.74 RLU/μg DNA) than in cancer-free individuals (13,336.00 ± 2,072.31 RLU/μg DNA; p < 0.01). Shortening of the telomere G-tail length was observed in the phase of ductal carcinoma in situ, and this trend was observed with or without shortening of the total telomere length. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis showed that there was no significant association between telomere G-tail length and total telomere length in breast cancer patients (ρ = -0.09; p = 0.48). In contrast, a significant correlation was found between telomere G-tail length and total telomere length in cancer-free individuals (ρ = 0.29; p = 0.01). Conclusions Our study indicated that leukocyte telomere G-tail length may serve as a novel potential biomarker for detection of breast cancer. Citation Format: Yumiko Koi, Yasuhiro Tsutani, Yukie Nishiyama, Shinsuke Sasada, Norio Masumoto, Takayuki Kadoya, Ryou-u Takahashi, Morihito Okada, Hidetoshi Tahara. Telomere G-tail length correlates with the presence of breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2019 Dec 10-14; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P3-04-01.