| خلاصه مقاله | High metastasis, resistance to common treatments, and high mortality rate, has made triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) to be the most invasive type of breast cancer. High telomerase activity is involved in breast cancer tumorigenesis. The catalytic subunit of telomerase, telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), plays a critical role in telomere lengthening and extra-biological functions such as gene expression, and apoptosis. In this study, it has been aimed to evaluate intrinsic-, extrinsic-apoptosis following the inhibition of telomerase in TNBC cell lines. Materials and Method: TNBC cells were treated with IC50 levels of BIBR1532. Then, telomere length, and hTERT expression were evaluated. Finally, apoptosis rate, apoptosis-related proteins, and genes were analyzed. Results: The present results showed that IC50 level of telomerase inhibition induced apoptosis but did not leave any significant effect on telomere length. The results also indicated that telomerase inhibition induced extrinsic-apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 and caused intrinsic- apoptosis in MDAMB-468 cells. Furthermore, it was found that the expression of p53 decreased and was ineffective in cell apoptosis. Conclusion: The inhibition of telomerase caused intrinsic- and extrinsic- apoptosis and it could be utilized in breast cancer treatment. |