Endogenous retrovirus HERV-K6 and HERV-K11 polymorphisms’ analyses in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients

Many tumors, such as melanoma, breast cancer, germ cell tumors, renal cancer or ovarian cancer, express HERV proteins, mainly HERV-K (HML6) and HERV-K (HML2). However, there is no report showing any relation between squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (HNSCC) and HERVs in literature. Here we report the polymorphic changes of HERV-K6 and HERV-K11 in tumor tissue samples of HNSCC patients comparing with healthy individuals. For this purpose, genomic DNAs from tumor tissue samples of 2 healthy individuals and of 8 HNSCC patients were isolated and IRAP-PCR was performed. IRAP-PCR analyses demonstrated that there were 18–73% polymorphism rates for HERV-K6 and 38–100% polymorphism rates for HERV-K11 among all the samples. There were also polymorphic changes between two control materials. Therefore, HERV-K6 polymorphisms may arise on an individual-specific basis. In the previous studies, some associations have been reported between the expression of HERVs and some cancer types or other major diseases. However, few reports have analyzed HERV-K movements among HNSCC patients. This report is the first study investigating HERV-K6 and HERV-K11 retrotransposon polymorphic changes in HNSCC patients.