Telomere attrition occurs mostly in precursor lesions in early carcinogenesis.

2004 DEC 2 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Telomere attrition occurs mostly in precursor lesions in early stages of cervical cancer development, researchers have determined.

"Although human papillomavirus (HPV) has been defined as the pathogen for cervical carcinomas, molecular events underlying the oncogenic process are unclear. As telomere dysfunction-mediated chromosomal instability and telomerase activation have been suggested as key events in carcinogenesis, we dissected the dynamic changes in telomere length, checkpoint response, and temporal profile of telomerase expression during the evolution from precursor lesions (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, CINs) to invasive cancers of the uterine cervix in sequential samples from 16 patients," wrote A.J. Zhang and colleagues at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.

Imaging revealed that "telomeres were significantly shortened in all CIN samples and no further substantial attritions occurred in most cases with the acquisition of malignant phenotype," Zhang's team said.

"Very short telomeres were coupled with constitutive activation of the DNA damage response pathway (Chk2 phosphorylation) and increased cellular proliferation in those cervical specimens. Telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) expression ...