Isolation and phylogenetic analysis of HERV-K long terminal repeat cDNA in cancer cells

Long terminal repeat (LTR) elements of human endogenous retrovirus (HERV-K) may have contributed to disease-associated structural change or genetic variation in the human genome. The LTR elements have been found to be coexpressed with sequences of closely located genes. We identified seven HERV-K LTR elements from mRNA of human cancer cells (HepG2, MCF7, and SiHa), using the RT-PCR approach. Four of them are closely related to the human-specific HERV-K LTR elements with a high degree of sequence homology in a neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree. The data suggest that recently proliferated HERV-K LTR elements are expressed actively in various cancer cells. These HERV-K LTR elements deserve further investigation as potential leads in the treatment of human cancer.