The present study was initiated with the objective of finding out the role of possible factors in the etiology of gastrointestinal tract cancers. HPV-DNA was detected in 62.5% (25/40) of the patients by PCR. Telomerase activity as shown by TRAP-ELISA assay was detected in 82.5% (33/40) of the tumor samples and absent in 85.7% (30/35) of the normal samples taken from the same patients. As many as 53.6% (15/28) of the invasive cases were positive both for telomerase activity and for HPV, while 39.3% (11/28) of them, although indicating telomerase expression, showed no signal for HPV. This suggests that activation of telomerase could be by a pathway independent of HPV activation, although both parameters could act as diagnostic and prognostic markers for gastrointestinal tract cancers.