Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 21, 2015; 21(31): 9328-9336
Published online Aug 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i31.9328
Influence of the hTERT rs2736100 polymorphism on telomere length in gastric cancer
Won Sang Park, Jung Young Lee, Suk Woo Nam, Won Suk Choi, Olga Kim, Jung Hwan Yoon, Byung Joon Choi
Byung Joon Choi, Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 137-701, South Korea
Jung Hwan Yoon, Olga Kim, Won Suk Choi, Suk Woo Nam, Jung Young Lee, Won Sang Park, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 137-701, South Korea
Suk Woo Nam, Jung Young Lee, Won Sang Park, Functional Rnomics Research Center, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 137-701, South Korea
Author contributions: Park WS designed the research; Choi BJ, Yoon JH, Kim O and Choi WS performed research; Choi BJ, Yoon JH, Park WS analyzed the data; Nam SW and Lee JY contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Choi BJ and Park WS wrote the paper.
Supported by Basic Science Research Programs (2012R1A2A2A01002531) through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Catholic University of Korea, College of Medicine (CUMC09U089).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors disclose no potential conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Won Sang Park, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, 505 Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul 137-701, South Korea. wonsang@catholic.ac.kr
Telephone: +82-2-22587310 Fax: +82-2-5376586
Received: March 27, 2015
Peer-review started: March 28, 2015
First decision: June 2, 2015
Revised: June 22, 2015
Accepted: July 3, 2015
Article in press: July 3, 2015
Published online: August 21, 2015
Processing time: 145 Days and 23.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The rs2736100 polymorphism is closely associated with reduced human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) mRNA expression and shortened telomere length in gastric cancer tissue and cell lines. Additionally, telomere length and hTERT mRNA levels were significantly increased in those with the C/C genotype in intestinal-type gastric cancer. Notably, there was no significant difference in the genotype and allele frequencies of the rs2736100 polymorphism between the patients with gastric cancer and healthy controls. These results suggest that the rs2736100 polymorphism of the hTERT gene is involved in the regulation of hTERT expression and telomere length, but not in the risk of gastric cancer.