OnCo

TERT (Telomerase reverse transcriptase) is a gene that drives cell growth when it is altered. The public catalogues list it as a drug target, an oncogene driver and a biomarker, and an approved or late-stage drug is recorded against it. Tied to Myeloproliferative neoplasms, Leukaemia, Lung cancer and 5 more. This dossier gathers the 0 products (0 approved), 0 trials, 0 pathways and 0 resistance routes in the corpus that involve it, with external identifiers so it can be joined to UniProt, ChEMBL, Open Targets and the rest of biology.

Biology

Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein enzyme essential for the replication of chromosome termini in most eukaryotes. Active in progenitor and cancer cells. Inactive, or very low activity, in normal somatic cells. Catalytic component of the teleromerase holoenzyme complex whose main activity is the elongation of telomeres by acting as a reverse transcriptase that adds simple sequence repeats to chromosome ends by copying a template sequence within the RNA component of the enzyme. Catalyses the RNA-dependent extension of 3'-chromosomal termini with the 6-nucleotide telomeric repeat unit, 5'-TTAGGG-3'. The catalytic cycle involves primer binding, primer extension and release of product once the template boundary has been reached or nascent product translocation followed by further extension. Location: Nucleus, nucleolus; Nucleus, nucleoplasm; Nucleus; Chromosome, telomere (UniProt). Locus 5p15.33 (HGNC).

Where it is found
  • Myeloproliferative neoplasms: Open Targets association 0.75 with myeloproliferative neoplasm (MONDO_0020076)
  • Leukaemia: Open Targets association 0.75 with leukaemia (MONDO_0005059)
  • Lung cancer: Open Targets association 0.68 with lung cancer (MONDO_0008903)
  • Skin cancer: Open Targets association 0.66 with skin cancer (MONDO_0002898)
  • Breast cancer: Open Targets association 0.66 with breast cancer (MONDO_0007254)
  • Bladder & urothelial cancer: Open Targets association 0.64 with urinary bladder cancer (MONDO_0001187); CIViC evidence names this disease
Class: oncogene · Gene: TERT · Facts checked 2026-09-23 · Target page

External identifiers

Built from HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt and ChEMBL ids

Products by modality and phase

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No trial in the corpus names this target or one of its products.

Resistance routes

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The resistance atlas has no route that names this target.

No pathway diagram carries this target as a node.

Companion diagnostics

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Preclinical models

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No model entry for this target yet; check the cancer entries on the models page.

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Literature

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Query for this target: (TITLE:"TERT" OR ABSTRACT:"TERT" OR TITLE:"telomerase reverse transcriptase" OR ABSTRACT:"telomerase reverse transcriptase" OR TITLE:"Telomerase reverse transcriptase" OR ABSTRACT:"Telomerase reverse transcriptase" OR TITLE:"TP2" OR ABSTRACT:"TP2" OR TITLE:"TCS1" OR ABSTRACT:"TCS1" OR TITLE:"hEST2" OR ABSTRACT:"hEST2") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about TERT, not a curated reading list.

Export

The dossier as machine-readable JSON: identifiers from HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt and ChEMBL, products with status, trials, pathways, hotspots, open questions and assays. The full entity record is in the open API at /api/v1/entities/tert.json. Licence CC BY-NC 4.0.