Toshima S, Arai T, Yasuda Y, Takaya T, Ito Y, Hayakawa K, Shibuya C, Yoshimi N, Shibayama M, Kashiki Y
Department of Pathology, Gihoku General Hospital, Yamagata-Gun, Gifu 501-2105, Japan.
Oncol Rep. 1999 Jan-Feb;6(1):199-203. doi: 10.3892/or.6.1.199.
Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein that synthesizes telometric DNA on chromosome ends, and may be related to the aging and immortality of cells. Recently, a telometric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay for telomerase activity, using the polymerase chain reaction, was developed. We examined the limitations of TRAP assay by applying it to a cultured colon cancer cell line (COLO320) and 58 human cytological materials from body cavity effusions, and obtained the following results; i) The limits of the TRAP assay were 20-50 cells for the COLO320 cell line; ii) One COLO320 cell per 100 normal blood white cells was detectable; iii) Seventeen of 58 samples were positive for telomerase activity in this study. The sensitivity was 69% (9/13) and the specificity was 87.5% (28/32) between cytological diagnosis and telomerase activity; iv) Among 29 malignant cases, 15 were positive for telomerase activity, while there were 11 cytologically positive cases. The positive cases detected by the combination of cytology and telomerase activity accounted for 21 of the total 29 cases (72.4%). These results suggest that the measurement of telomerase activity in body cavity effusions may be useful as an adjunctive tool for cytological and clinicopathological diagnosis and that this technique is potentially applicable to remnant cytological materials.
端粒酶是一种核糖核蛋白，可在染色体末端合成端粒DNA，可能与细胞衰老和永生有关。最近，一种利用聚合酶链反应检测端粒酶活性的端粒重复序列扩增法（TRAP）被开发出来。我们将TRAP法应用于培养的结肠癌细胞系（COLO320）和58份体腔积液的人体细胞学材料，以检验该方法的局限性，结果如下：i）对于COLO320细胞系，TRAP法的检测限为20 - 50个细胞；ii）每100个正常血液白细胞中可检测到1个COLO320细胞；iii）本研究中58份样本中有17份端粒酶活性呈阳性。细胞学诊断与端粒酶活性之间的敏感性为69%（9/13），特异性为87.5%（28/32）；iv）在29例恶性病例中，15例端粒酶活性呈阳性，而细胞学阳性病例有11例。细胞学和端粒酶活性联合检测出的阳性病例占29例总数的21例（72.4%）。这些结果表明，检测体腔积液中端粒酶活性可能作为细胞学和临床病理诊断的辅助工具，并且该技术可能适用于剩余的细胞学材料。
