Objective: To investigate telomerase activity and expression of hTR and hTERT in human neuroepithelial tumors for exploring new strategy for clinical diagnosis and treatment.
Methods: Telomerase activity was detected by modified TRAP method and the expression of hTR and hTERT was measured by RT-PCR method in 65 human neuroepithelial tumors, respectively.
Results: The positive rates of telomerase and hTERT were 61.54% and 70.77% respectively in human neuroepithelial tumors, and the positive rate and their level of expression were correlated with the degree of malignancy of tumors positively.
Conclusions: Telomerase activity and hTERT are significantly correlated with the degree of malignancyin human neuroepithelial tumors. hTERT may play a key role in the regulation of telomerase activity.