TERT and cancer: The associations between high telomerase expression and activity and more aggressive phenotypes and progression in HNSCC may be ascribable not only to its ability to maintain telomere lengths in rapidly proliferating cells but also to TERT’s extra-telomeric functions and their interactions with other cancer-related signaling cascades, such as Wnt/β-catenin and NF-kB pathways [92, 182].