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Immortalization of epithelial progenitor cells mediated by resveratrol

Oncogene volume 27, pages 2365–2374 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Within the hierarchy of epithelial stem cells, normal progenitor cells may express regulated telomerase during renewal cycles of proliferation and differentiation. Discontinuous telomerase activity may promote increased renewal capacity of progenitor cells, while deregulated/continuous telomerase activity may promote immortalization when differentiation and/or senescent pathways are compromised. In the present work, we show that resveratrol activates, while progesterone inactivates, continuous telomerase activity within 24 h in subpopulations of human Li–Fraumeni syndrome-derived breast epithelial cells. Resveratrol results in immortalization of mixed progenitor cells with mutant p53, but not human epithelial cells with wild type p53. Our results demonstrate the potential for renewing progenitor cells with mutant p53 to immortalize after continuous telomerase expression when exposed to certain environmental compounds. Understanding the effects of telomerase modulators on endogenous telomerase activity in progenitor cells is relevant to the role of immortalization in the initiation and progression of cancer subtypes.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Jackie Swanik for editorial comments and William Walker for technical assistance. This work was supported by NCI-NO1-CN43301, NCI-CN-05106, Lung Cancer SPORE P50 CA75907, NSCOR NNJ05HD36G and the Ted Nash Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth, University of North Texas, Fort Worth, TX, USA

    V P Pearce

  2. School of Dentistry, University of Arizona, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    J Sherrell

  3. Department of Cell Biology, UT Southwestern Medical School, University of North Texas, Dallas, TX, USA

    V P Pearce, Z Lou, W E Wright & J W Shay

  4. Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA

    L Kopelovich

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  1. V P Pearce
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Correspondence to J W Shay.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Oncogene website (http://www.nature.com/onc).

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Pearce, V., Sherrell, J., Lou, Z. et al. Immortalization of epithelial progenitor cells mediated by resveratrol. Oncogene 27, 2365–2374 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.onc.1210886

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