Quantitative analysis of telomerase activity and telomerase reverse transcriptase expression in renal cell carcinoma

To investigate the relationship between the telomerase activity levels and clinicopathological features of tumors, we quantified the telomerase activities of 23 renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) and four non-cancerous tissues, using a modified telomeric repeat amplification protocol assay, and assessed the hTERT mRNA levels of these samples by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction analysis. Elevated levels of telomerase activity had correlation with tumor stages as well as the degree of nuclear grades. Our findings suggested that telomerase activity is a useful indicator for tumor aggressiveness in RCCs. However, hTERT mRNA levels in RCCs had no correlation with nuclear grades and tumor stages. The telomerase activities and the hTERT mRNA levels in cancer cells were not always in parallel. These results suggested that telomerase activity is regulated in a posttranscriptional manner as well as a post-translational manner in tumor cells.