gms | German Medical Science

77th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

24.05. - 28.05.2006, Mannheim

Article

Send article

HNSCC suppress antitumor production of human beta defensins as a self-protection mechanism

Plattenepithelkarzinome unterdrücken die antitumorale Produktion von humanen Beta-Defensinen als Selbstschutz

Meeting Abstract

Search Medline for

  • corresponding author presenting/speaker Jens Eduard Meyer - Department of ORL, H&N Surgery, Lübeck, Germany
  • Patrick Hörtling - Department of ORL, H&N Surgery, Lübeck, Germany
  • Dirk Janssen - Department of Pathology, Kiel, Germany
  • Bence Sipos - Department of Pathology, Kiel, Germany
  • Thomas Gutsmann - Leibniz Institution, Borstel, Germany
  • Jürgen Harder - Clinical Research Group, Kiel, Germany
  • Barbara Wollenberg - Department of ORL, H&N Surgery, Lübeck, Germany
  • Steffen Maune - Department of ORL, H&N Surgery, Kiel, Germany

German Society of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. 77th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Mannheim, 24.-28.05.2006. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2006. Doc06hno070

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/hno2006/06hno070.shtml

Published: September 7, 2006

© 2006 Meyer et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

Text

Despite substantial advances in cancer treatment, there is still an urgent need for adjuvant drugs with a new active principle, which preferentially kill head and neck cancer carcinomas (HNSCC). Animal antimicrobial peptides have been assigned to have an antitumor capacity. Epithelial beta-defensins belong to the human group of antimicrobial peptides. Indeed, in HNSCC the loss of the defensin-coding gene section on the short arm of chromosome 8 leads to a shift of a precancerous lesion to an invasive cancer. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role human beta-defensins (hBDs) in the carcinogenesis of patients suffering from HNSCCs. At first, we studied specifically the allele loss in the defensin-coding region in HNSCC compared to normal control tissue from the same patient by micro satellite analysis of microdissected tissue. Here we found an allele loss in 40 % of all tested oropharyngeal HNSCCs. Immunhistochemistry studies confirmed this result on the translational level. Moreover, smoking and drinking induce the production of hBDs in HNSCCs. To test the biological relevance of the defensin loss in HNSCC, the direct cytotoxicity of hBDs against HNSCC cells and their benign phenotypes was assayed. In terms of hBD-3 we found a time- and dose-dependent cytotoxicity against a hypopharyngeal HNSCC cell line (HTB-43), which works through necrosis of the HNSCC cells. So the HNSCC seems to consciously suppress the production of hBDs to avoid self-destruction on site. Additionally, it has been published that a higher concentration of hBDs in HNSCCs leads to an improved prognosis of our patients.

This investigation was funded by the Hensel-Stiftung and the Research Foundation of the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein.