Abstract

The Immortalization of normal eukaryotic cells is often associated with the reactivation of the ribonucleoprotein enzyme telomerase, which adds TTAGGG repeats on to the telomeres of chromosomes and is thought to be present in germ cells but not in normal somatic cells. Recently telomerase activity has been found in most immortalized human cell lines and various cancer tissues, but has not been found in most of normal somatic tissues. In present study, we show that telomerase activation can also occur in human cervical carcinomas. Extracts from 25 human cervical carcinomas and 10 normal cervical tissues were tested for telomerase activity using a recently developed polymerase chain reaction-based telomeric repeat amplification assay. Twenty(80%) of cervical carcinoma tissues were positive for telomerase acivity and 3(30%) of normal cervical tissues were also positive. There were no correlation between the level of telomerase activitty and degree of malignancy.This result suggest that telomerase activity seems to be uniquely relate to cervical carcinomas and telomerase appears to be repressed in normal tissues but may be reactivated in cervical carcinoms. Thus telomerase activity will be a useful marker for the cervical carcinomas.

• Keywords: Telomerase, Cevical cancers