investigation of the e-cadherin promoter methylation in patients with colorectal cancer in iran

objective: e-cadherin is widely down-regulated and tightly associated with tumor invasion and metastasis in multiple human cancer types. recent studies have shown that aberrant methylation of the e-cadherin gene promoter contributes to its silencing. however, information regarding epigenetic inactivation of e-cadherin in colorectal cancer is insufficient. herein, we correlate association of the methylation of the e-cadherin promoter with pathological features of colorectal cancer as well as history and demographic data. methods: we used methylation specific polymerase chain reaction (mspcr) to examine methylation status of the 5’ cpg island of e-cadherin along with its expression by using rt-pcr following surgical resection of 66 unrelated patients with colorectal cancer. results: results showed that 35 out of 66 tumor dna samples (53%) showed aberrant methylations. in contrast, all normal tissues were unmethylated. conclusion: the obtained results show a similarity with the japanese (54.5%) and greek (55.7%) populations. the results have confirmed methylation of this gene in sporadic colorectal cancer cases (40.8%) in the iranian population by researchers in shiraz. these data suggest that epigenetic silencing via aberrant methylation of the e-cadherin promoter plays a critical role in the inactivation of this tumor suppressor gene in colorectal cancer.