Detection of EBV Infection and Gene Expression in Oral Cancer from Patients in Taiwan by Microarray Analysis

Figure 3

Quantitative real-time RT-PCR of the CD45, EBNA1, and EBNA2 transcripts in tumor samples. Due to the limited number of available frozen tissues, seven OSCC samples numbered 38, 41, 2, 47, 13, 14, and 21 (Case numbers are as those listed in Table 1), with the former two categorized as EBV-negative and others as positive, are used in this quantitative real-time PCR experiment. The portions in the frozen tissues applying to the experiments were all at positions adjacent to the respective tissue specimens used in the prior EBV-chip hybridizations. The results reveal that, after normalizing with the expression levels for the 𝛽-actin gene, the expressions of the gene for the pan-WBC surface marker CD45 in both the cell lines U937 and B95-8 are clearly detected, whereas they are low in all cancer samples, suggesting that EBV gene expression, if any, present in infiltrated blood cells does not contribute to the signals detected with EBV-chip. Tumor sample numbers 38 and 41 are EBV-negative (Table 3), samples 2 and 47 only express the great amounts of the EBNA2 gene transcript, and the rest of cases numbered 13, 14, and 21 have the strong expression signals for both the EBNA1 and EBNA2 genes. In conclusion, the data from the quantitative real-time RT-PCR analysis are in agreement with those shown in Figure 2. In here, two identical quantitative real-time PCR have been performed and very similar results are obtained. □: CD45; : EBNA1; ■: EBNA2.