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Published on: September 13, 2017
Bisphosphonates decrease telomerase activity and hTERT expression in MCF-7 breast cancer cells
Luca Dalle Carbonare1, Maria Teresa Valenti, Giuseppe Azzarello
1Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, Clinica Medica I, University of Padova, Italy. luca.dallecarbonare@unipd.it
Abstract:
Bisphosphonates are important in the management of tumours with secondary bone involvement. Recent findings have suggested that these drugs also have an effect on primary tumour burden. Telomerase is a cellular ribonucleoprotein reverse transcriptase responsible for elongation of the telomere. Telomerase expression is increased in many cancers. We studied the direct effects of clodronate, alendronate, and pamidronate (from 10(-6) to 10(-4) M) on MCF-7 human breast cancer cell line. In particular, we investigated their effect on viability, proliferation, apoptosis, human telomerase reverse transcriptase expression (h-TERT) by RT-PCR and telomerase activity. Alendronate and pamidronate showed an inhibition of viability (-63 and -35%, respectively; p < 0.0001) and proliferation of cancer cells, while no effect was observed with clodronate. Amino-bisphosphonates induced a significant increase of apoptosis in MCF-7. In addition, they showed a significant decrease in telomerase expression and activity with respect to control and to clodronate.
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