Telomerase, the enzyme that stabilizes telomere length is reactivated with almost all cancer types, and may be a useful diagnostic marker for malignancy. Telomerase activity has been detected in germ line cells and most cancer cells, whereas most normal somatic cells have no clearly detectable telomerase activity. In our study, we aim to detect telomerase activity in 20 human central nervous sy...

Objective: To evaluate telomerase activity as a marker of lymphocyte proliferation in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Methods: CD19+, CD4+, and CD8+ lymphocytes were isolated from the peripheral blood of nine patients with SLE and nine healthy controls by means of magnetic beadcoupled antibodies and tested for telomerase activity with the TRAP assay. Results: Telomerase activity was signifi...

Telomerase, a specialized ribonucleoprotein reverse transcriptase that directs the synthesis of telomeric DNA, is repressed in normal human somatic cells, but is activated in most cancers. Little is known concerning how telomerase activity is activated and maintained in cancer cells. We have shown previously that inhibition of protein kinase C (PKC) decreases the telomerase activity of human na...

Telomere and Telomerase have recently been explored as anti-aging and anti-cancer drug targets with only limited success. Previously we showed that the Chinese herbal medicine Tianshengyuan-1 (TSY-1), an agent used to treat bone marrow deficiency, has a profound effect on stimulating Telomerase activity in hematopoietic cells. Here, the mechanism of TSY-1 on cellular Telomerase activity was fur...

The telomere repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) for the human reverse transcriptase, telomerase, is a PCR-based assay developed two decades ago and is still used for routine determination of telomerase activity. The TRAP assay can only reproducibly detect ∼ 2-fold differences and is only quantitative when compared to internal standards and reference cell lines. The method generally involves l...

PURPOSE Pancreatic cysts frequently pose clinical dilemmas. On one hand, cysts with high-grade dysplasia offer opportunities for cure, on the other hand, those with low-grade dysplasia are easily over treated. Cyst fluid markers have the potential to improve the evaluation of these cysts. Because telomerase activity is commonly activated in malignant cells, we evaluated the diagnostic performan...

Telomerase shows increased activity in most human cancers and germ line cells, but not in normal human somatic cells. We describe a novel chemiluminescence method for the facile assay of telomerase activity in human cells. The telomerase substrate was incubated with the cell lysate containing various amounts of telomerase, and then the telomerase product was amplified by the polymerase-chained ...

In recent years there has been considerable interest in telomerase as a target for therapeutic intervention in oncology. This largely stems from the vast number of studies that have demonstrated expression and activity of the enzyme telomerase in the majority of human cancer tissues with little or no activity detectable in normal somatic tissues. These studies have led to an interest in the rol...

In a total of 41 endometrial tissue samples, the relationship between telomerase activity and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) labelling index was studied. In samples of endometrium from the proliferative phase of the menstrual cycle, telomerase activity was found in 15 out of 17 cases (88%). Two samples from the early proliferative phase showed negative telomerase activity and a low P...

Our objective was to understand the mechanism through which cells that initially survive irradiation could acquire survival advantage. In this study, we show evidence that low-linear energy transfer c-radiation can induce telomerase enzyme activity in primary aortic endothelial cells, and that an upstream regulator, nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB), controls this activation. Telomeric repeat ampl...