Issue 13, 2012

Assays for human telomerase activity: progress and prospects

Abstract

Human telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein complex that functions as a telomere terminal transferase by adding multiple TTAGGG hexamer repeats using its integral RNA as the template. There is a very strong association between telomerase activity and malignancy in nearly all types of cancer, suggesting that telomerase could be used not only as a diagnostic and prognostic marker but also as a therapeutic target for managing cancer. The significant progress in biomedical telomerase research has necessitated the development of new bioanalytical methods for the rapid, sensitive, and reliable detection of telomerase activity in a particular cell or clinical tissue and body fluids. In this review, we highlight some of the latest methods for identifying telomerase activity and inhibition and discuss some of the challenges for designing innovative telomerase assays. We also summarise the current technologies and speculate on future directions for telomerase testing.

Graphical abstract: Assays for human telomerase activity: progress and prospects

Article information

Article type
Tutorial Review
Submitted
16 Feb 2012
First published
01 May 2012

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2012,41, 4643-4656

Assays for human telomerase activity: progress and prospects

X. Zhou and D. Xing, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2012, 41, 4643 DOI: 10.1039/C2CS35045A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements