Effects of Three Actinic Keratosis Mutations on Apoptosis

Introduction: Ultraviolet radiation contributes to the etiology of skin cancers by generating mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene. The incidence of skin cancer is doubling each decade; 95% of these are the non-melanoma skin cancers. Actinic keratosis is a precancerous lesion characterized by aberrant proliferation and cell differentiation that progresses to squamous cell carcinoma at a rate of similar to 0.1% per year. Our aim was to determine whether mutant p53 alleles found in Actinic Keratosis have different phenotypic effects on UVB-induced apoptosis that might explain why only some progress to squamous cell carcinoma.