Effects and underlying mechanisms of telomerase reverse transcriptase in carcinogenesis and cancer progression / 肿瘤

ABSTRACT

As a limiting factor in telomerase activity,telomerase reverse transcriptase(TERT)controls cellular senescence and apoptosis by maintaining telomere length.TERT is not expressed or little expressed in most normal cells.However,the abnormal overexpression of TERT promotes the ability of tumor cells to replicate indefinitely.This review summarizes the regulatory mechanisms of TERT expression,including the main transcription factor families,single nucleotide polymorphism sites,and epigenetic modification changes such as DNA methylation,histone modification,and non-coding RNA.The role of these molecular mechanisms as well as significant TERT single-base variants and virus integration variants in the occurrence and development of cancer are reviewed.On this basis,its application in tumor diagnosis and prognosis is discussed.