ibs.GRANADA scientists demonstrate the importance of telomerase activity in oral cancer

The group A04-Digital and Computational Pathology, Immunopathology and Cancer of the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada (ibs.GRANADA), has carried out a study that demonstrates the role played by telomerase, a substance related to aging, in the development and prognosis of oral cancer.

Oral cancer is a serious disease that affects more than 375.000 patients worldwide every year. In addition, suffering from this tumor carries a high risk of death, with more than 150.000 deaths per year, accounting for 50% of deaths after 5 years after diagnosis. All this occurs fundamentally as a consequence of the late diagnosis of a majority of patients suffering from oral cancer. In recent years, considerable interest has been aroused in the molecular mechanisms that govern the aging of organs and tissues, and it has been observed that certain mechanisms related to aging are related to cancer.

The research carried out from the ibs.GRANADA, by professors Miguel Ángel González Moles and Pablo Ramos García, has consisted of the systematic review of thousands of scientific articles on oral squamous cell carcinoma, finally using a total of 21, where they have found a high scientific evidence that demonstrates the importance of telomerase activity in oral cancer.

Older people are at higher risk of developing tumors. One of the mechanisms that explains this fact is linked to the shortening of telomeres, which are DNA fragments at the ends of chromosomes, whose essential function is to protect the rest of the chromosome's DNA. With aging, telomeres progressively shorten until they finally leave the DNA unprotected, which consequently begins to develop alterations in its structure that are predisposing to cancer. Maintenance of telomere length in neoplastic cells is one pathway by which cancer progresses and spreads. Tumor cells achieve this by activating an enzyme, telomerase, whose main function is to maintain telomere length.

In many types of tumors, an increase in the activity of the enzyme telomerase can be detected, frequently mediated by an excessive production of one of its components, telomerase reverse transcriptase, which we call TERT.

The study, published in the prestigious journal Cancers by González Moles and Ramos García, which has included a total of 1698 patients with oral cancer, has shown for the first time that the elevated activity of the TERT enzyme in tumor cells, measured by a simple method immunohistochemical, behaves as a powerful marker of risk of death in patients with oral cancer. This finding will presumably help to better predict the prognosis of these patients and to select those who will need more aggressive treatment and closer follow-up, and all of this will probably result in an improvement in the survival of these patients.

About the research group

The research group "Digital and Computational Pathology, Immunopathology and Cancer" of ibs.GRANADA, whose responsible researchers are Javier Luis López Hidalgo and Miguel Ángel González Moles, focuses its research on the identification of new markers of prognostic and diagnostic interest in cancer . It also conducts research on the biopathology of oral squamous cell carcinoma, essentially aimed at the analysis of cell proliferation markers in premalignant epithelia and tumor tissue, as well as the study of proliferation-stimulating proteins. In recent years, the main line of the group has been directed to the field of expression of cancer stem cell markers in premalignant epithelium and oral cancer, as well as the analysis of the expression of cancer hallmarks (distinctive characteristics of neoplastic cells). Currently, using digital pathology and computational pathology tools, the research group is developing learning models through deep-learning as a new line of cancer research.

More information about the group at https://www.ibsgranada.es/grupos-de-investigacion/a04-aparato-digestivo-cancer-nefropatias/