Telomerase activity in Malaysian patients with central nervous system tumors

Telomerase, the enzyme that stabilizes telomere length is reactivated with almost all cancer types, and may be a useful diagnostic marker for malignancy. Telomerase activity has been detected in germ line cells and most cancer cells, whereas most normal somatic cells have no clearly detectable telomerase activity. In our study, we aim to detect telomerase activity in 20 human central nervous system tumors from Malaysian patients. Telomerase activity was detected based on a highly sensitive procedure consisting of a CHAPS detergent-based extraction from frozen tissues and a PCR-based telomeric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) using a TRAPEZE Telomerase Detection Kit (Intergen, Co). Telomerase activity was considered positive when a ladder of products was observed starting at 50bp, with 6bp increments. The activity was detected in 30% of the samples analysed, included glioblastoma multiforme, meduloblastoma, paraganglioma and oligodendroglioma. The result of Fisher's exact test indicated that there was a significant association between telomerase activity status with tumor grade (p=0.003). These results suggest that telomerase activity may be an important marker for tumor malignancy.