Figure 3.

Utility of the modified MMQPCR method for measuring relative telomere lengths in cancer DNA. (A) Representative standard curves of MMQPCR were shown along with R² and PCR efficiency (Eff). Each qPCR run included all standard DNAs with five serial dilutions. The separation (about three cycle differences) between the amplification of the telomere primer set and the two mcs primer sets (MRef1 and MRef2) allows for use of the multiplexing method. (B and C) The relative telomere length measurements (T/M₁ and T/M₂) calculated utilizing the new MMQPCR methods were highly correlated with the southern blot measurements when using cell-line cancer DNA samples (n = 18). Correlation of absolute telomere length (kb) vs. T/M₁ and absolute telomere length (kb) vs. T/M₂ was shown in B and C, respectively. (D) Comparison of two qPCR methods (new MMQPCR as T/M₁ vs. current telomere qPCR as T/S) using the same noninvasive and invasive breast cancer samples (n = 13 each). Each value was generated from three experimental repeats in duplicate.