XXII. BIOCHEMICKÝ ZJAZD - Jesseniova lekárska fakulta

Lectures
Apoptosis IN rELaTION TO THE DEvELOPMENT of caNCEr
aND rESISTaNCE of caNCEr CELLS TO CYTOSTaTICS
Jozef Hatok 1 , Jana Jurečeková 1 , Peter Chudý 2 , Pavol Hollý 2 , Anton Dzian 3 ,
Eduard Huľo 3 , Eva Fabianová 1 , Tatiana Matáková 1 and Peter Račay 1
1
Department of Medical Biochemistry, 2 Clinic of Hematology and Transfusiology,
3
Clinic of Surgery – JFM and MFH in Martin, CU in Bratislava, Slovakia
Apoptosis plays an important role in development and homeostasis of the multicellular
organisms and its deregulation may result in many serious diseases, including cancer.
In addition, dysregulation of apoptosis is associated with resistance of cancer cells to
cytostatics. We studied the expression of mRNA of apoptotic proteins (p53, Bax, Bcl-2
and Bcl-X L
) in samples from cancer patients. In addition, we focused on their correlation
with the results of chemoresistance testing. We examined 102 samples from patients
with haematological malignancies (60) and solid tumors (42). To determine the levels of
mRNA we used the RT-PCR. The in vitro chemoresistance of leukaemic cells was evaluated
by MTT assay. Statistically significant differences of mRNA expression of all investigated
proteins between the group of leukaemia samples and leukocytes from healthy volunteers
were determined (p