Telomerase is a strong indicator for assessing the proneness to progression in neuroblastomas

Background. As traditional parameters do not ensure completely accurate pro gnostic grouping in neuroblastoma (NB), new molecular markers are needed fo r assessing the individual patient's prognosis more precisely. Procedure, R esults, and Conclusions. Based on 133 NB, we show that telomerase activity (TA) is a powerful, independent prognostic marker for all stages and is cap able of differentiating between good and poor outcome in putative 'favorabl e' clinical or biological subgroups of NE patients. Analysis of gene and pr otein expression of telomerase subunits suggests that the presence or absen ce of TA in NE is strongly correlated with expression levels of both the ca talytic subunit hTERT and the internal RNA component (hTR). Med. Pediatr. O ncol. 35: 651-655, 2000. (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.