TELOMERASE ACTIVITY IN IRANIAN PATIENTS WITH ESOPHAGHEL SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA

Telomerase activation is one of the main pathways to immortalize cancer cells. In many kinds of cancer cells, this special reverse transcriptase stabilizes and elongates telomeres and prevents telomere erosion that naturally occurs in every cell division. Esophageal cancer is the fifth most frequent cause of cancer death worldwide, and is highly associated with alcohol, smoking, cultural habits, and environmental factors. Telomerase has been suggested as a tumor marker and a molecular target for drug design in several kinds of cancers. In this work telomerase activation was inspected among Iranian patients with Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (ESCC), and detected in 90% of samples of different stages. This may be an indication that telomerase activation happens in an initial step in the development of ESCC. Although there is no correlation between telomerase activity and the progress of ESCC, it could be considered as a good tumor marker in ESCC. Telomerase activity tests are suggested for screening purposes in high risk areas for ESCC, which can be easily done on a small amount of scrapped samples of esophageal mucosa. It is also possible that ESCC results from incomplete differentiation or a failure in telomerase gene switching off that nonnally occurs during the differentiation of esophageal epithelial cells.