Telomerase inhibition decreases esophageal squamous carcinoma cell migration and invasion

Li,Jiayan; Dong,Guogang; Song,Jinyun; Tan,Guolei; Wu,Xuping

doi:10.3892/ol.2020.11810

Telomerase inhibition decreases esophageal squamous carcinoma cell migration and invasion

Authors:
- Jiayan Li
- Guogang Dong
- Jinyun Song
- Guolei Tan
- Xuping Wu
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Affiliations: The Second Hospital of Nanjing, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210003, P.R. China, The General Hospital of Eastern Theater Command of The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), Nanjing, Jiangsu 210002, P.R. China
Published online on: July 3, 2020 https://doi.org/10.3892/ol.2020.11810
Pages: 2870-2880
Copyright: © Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License.

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Abstract

Telomerase has been shown to be associated with a variety of cancer types. To elucidate the role of telomerase in esophageal squamous carcinoma (ESCC), tissue samples from 100 patients with ESCC, and paired paracancerous tissues from 75 of these patients, were collected for use in the present study. Using immunohistochemical analysis, the expression of telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) in the cytoplasm of ESCC cells was revealed to be significantly higher compared with that in paracancerous tissues, and no significant difference was observed between hTERT expression in the nucleus of ESCC and paracancerous tissue cells. Combined analysis revealed that the cytoplasmic hTERT‑positive rate of patients with ESCC was significantly associated with pathological grade, N stage and Tumor‑Node‑Metastasis (TNM) stage; these data support the association between hTERT expression and poor patient prognosis. In vitro experiments demonstrated that hTERT knockdown does not inhibit the proliferation of ESCC Kyse410 or Kyse520 cells, but inhibits their migration and invasion abilities. These findings indicate that hTERT expression is associated with ESCC metastasis. Interestingly, decreased colony‑formation ability was observed in Kyse410 cells, but not in Kyse520 cells. Collectively, the results of the present study suggest that hTERT may serve as a potential therapeutic target for ESCC.

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