Telomerase inhibition decreases esophageal squamous carcinoma cell migration and invasion

Abstract

Telomerase has been shown to be associated with a variety of cancer types. To elucidate the role of telomerase in esophageal squamous carcinoma (ESCC), tissue samples from 100 patients with ESCC, and paired paracancerous tissues from 75 of these patients, were collected for use in the present study. Using immunohistochemical analysis, the expression of telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) in the cytoplasm of ESCC cells was revealed to be significantly higher compared with that in paracancerous tissues, and no significant difference was observed between hTERT expression in the nucleus of ESCC and paracancerous tissue cells. Combined analysis revealed that the cytoplasmic hTERT-positive rate of patients with ESCC was significantly associated with pathological grade, N stage and Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) stage; these data support the association between hTERT expression and poor patient prognosis. In vitro experiments demonstrated that hTERT knockdown does not inhibit the proliferation of ESCC Kyse410 or Kyse520 cells, but inhibits their migration and invasion abilities. These findings indicate that hTERT expression is associated with ESCC metastasis. Interestingly, decreased colony-formation ability was observed in Kyse410 cells, but not in Kyse520 cells. Collectively, the results of the present study suggest that hTERT may serve as a potential therapeutic target for ESCC.

Human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase as a Therapeutic Target of Dihydroartemisinin for Esophageal Squamous Cancer

“…Besides the antimalaria activity, DHA has been reported to exhibit significant anticancer activity in a variety of tumors (Dai et al, 2021), including lung cancer (Jiang et al, 2016), ovarian cancer (Li et al, 2018), MM (Wu et al, 2020), and hepatocellular carcinoma (Zou et al, 2019). Previous study demonstrated that inhibition of telomerase activity could reduce the proliferation and migration of esophageal cancer cells (Li et al, 2020). Our data showed that DHA could evidently downregulate the expression of hTERT both on mRNA and protein level.…”

Comparative Analysis of Primary Ovarian Cancer Cells and Established Cell Lines as a New Tool for Studies on Ovarian Cancer Cell Complexity

“…Moreover, increased migration and transmigration activity of U2OS cells was observed [62]. On the other hand, the silencing of hTERT via siRNA in esophageal squamous carcinoma cells decreased cell migration and invasiveness, but did not affect cell proliferation [63].…”

New and effective method to develop primary hepatocytes from liver cancer patients

“…Western blot for liver-specific proteins was performed as described previously. 16 Tumor cells were harvested and lysed with RIPA buffer (KeyGEN BioTECH, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China), and protein concentration was quantified with a bicinchoninic acid protein assay kit (KeyGEN BioTECH, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China). The proteins were boiled with 5X loading buffer, and 40-µg aliquots of total protein were separated using 12.5% SDS-PAGE gels, prior to transfer onto PVDF membranes (EMD Millipore, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany).…”

“…The expression of CK7, CK20 (Cytokeratin 7, Cytokeratin 20, both are cytoskeleton protein, used as biomarker of ICC), HEP1, GPC3, Arg1 (Hepatocyte paraffin 1, Glypican 3, Arginase-1, all are biomarker of HCC), and Ki67 (proliferation cell-associated nuclear antigen in tumor tissues) was assessed as reported before. 16 Cells were centrifuged at 1000 rpm for 5 min, and the pellet was embedded in paraffin for further immunohistochemical detection. The slices of tissue or cell were placed in an oven at 65°C for 1 h, then deparaffinized with xylene at room temperature for 3 times (10 min each) and then rehydrated with ethanol gradient treatment, including two rinses in absolute ethanol, a rinse in 90%, 80%, and 70% ethanol, respectively (7 min each), and finally three rinses in distilled water (3 min each).…”

“…However, differences in the genotypes of three loci between the PHH and its matched tissue were observed. Interestingly, the genotypes of the three loci were D13S317 (8,13) in the cell, D13S317(8, -) in the tissue, D18S51 (12,16) in the cell, D18S51 (12, -) in the tissue, FGA (21,27) in the cell, and FGA (21, -) in the tissue. This is a good demonstration of the tumor heterogeneity: genotypes showed differences in some loci between the tissue used for STR detection and the tissue used to establish PHHs.…”