Gull-e-lalah Saleem

Abstract 

Breast cancer (BC) has emerged as a leading cause of mortality among women globally. Among Asian countries, Pakistan has the highest incidence rate of breast cancer, affecting 1 in every 9 females. Interestingly, telomerase has been found to play a critical role in tumor progression and immortalization of tumor cells. Telomerase enzyme itself is composed of two components i.e., hTERT (Human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase) catalytic subunit which is transcribed from TERT gene (chromosome 5) and hTR (RNA template) which is transcribed from TERC (chromosome 3). Recent studies have identified multiple SNPs in TERTp and TERT gene itself which play role towards breast cancer susceptibility. Some of these most important SNPs are made part of this study. It is important to detect these SNPs in a cost-effective manner and analyze their relationship with the probability of breast cancer in Pakistani population. Therefore, current study aims at cost-effective screening of disease related multiple TERT SNPs in a cohort of breast cancer patients in Pakistan.