MICROBIO 160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Andrew Wakefield, Stratum Basale, Cervical Cancer

• School: UMASS-Amherst
• Department: Microbiology
• Course: MICROBIO 160
• Professor: Mitchell Walkowicz

Document Summary

80 percent of sexually active people have been exposed to hpv. You can be exposed and not get cervical cancer. Viral dna from hpv makes cells cancerous. Pap smear test- involves collecting cells from the cervix. Can detect whether cells in the cervix have changed or become cancerous. Most successful test in determining cervical cancer. Cells look oddly shaped on the pap smear because of this phenomenon. Hpv infects the basal cell layer of cells, which can stick around long enough to cause cancer. Pcr amplifies cells, if given a plus then you have hpv. Hpv lead to a defect of p53 gene due to dna damage. These proteins are able to bind to p53 making it useless as a tumor suppressor, if p53 isn"t able to do its job, the cell can become cancerous due to unregulated proliferation. High risk types characterised with major changes in cervical cells. Andrew wakefield published papers pointing to this link between the two.