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BACKGROUND Aberrant DNA hypermethylation plays a pivotal role in carcinogenesis and disease progression; therefore, accurate measurement of differential gene methylation patterns among many genes is likely to reveal biomarkers for improved risk assessment. We evaluated the gene hypermethylation profiles of primary breast tumors and their corresponding normal tissues and investigated the associa...

Epigenetic abnormalities including the aberrant DNA hypermethylation of the promoter CpG islands play a key role in the mechanism of gene inactivation in cell carcinogenesis. To identify the genes associated with aberrant DNA hypermethylation in endometrial carcinogenesis, we studied the hypermethylation of the promoter regions of five genes: hMLH1, APC, E-cadherin, RAR-beta and p16. The freque...

The p16INK4 gene, which is a tumor suppressor gene, is frequently altered in lung cancers. Hypermethylation of the promoter region of the p16INK4 gene seems to be the major mechanism through which p16INK4 become inactivated. Hypermethylation of the p16INK4 gene was reported to occur at an early stage in lung cancer. To determine whether the change in p16INK4 methylation status occurs at the lat...

BACKGROUND One challenge in prostate cancer is distinguishing indolent from aggressive disease at diagnosis. DNA promoter hypermethylation is a frequent epigenetic event in prostate cancer, but few studies of DNA methylation in relation to features of more aggressive tumors or prostate cancer recurrence have been completed. METHODS We used the Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip to assess D...

The p16 gene, which is a tumor suppressor gene, is frequently altered in lung cancers. Hypermethylation of the promoter region of the p16 gene seems to be the major mechanism through which p16 become inactivated. Hypermethylation of the p16 gene was reported to occur at an early stage in lung cancer. To determine whether the change in p16 methylation status occurs at the late stage in the progr...

The basic unit of chromatin is a nucleosome included an octamer of the four core histones and 147 base pairs of DNA. Posttranslational histones modifications affect chromatin structure resulting in gene expression changes. CpG islands hypermethylation within the gene promoter regions and the deacetylation of histone proteins are the most common epigenetic modifications. The aberrant patterns of...

PURPOSE Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in American women and the second leading cause of death from cancer. The genetic and epigenetic alterations that initiate and drive cancer can be used as targets for detection of neoplasia in bodily fluids. Tumor cell-specific aberrant promoter hypermethylation can be detected in nipple aspirate and ductal lavage from breast cancer patients. I...

To identify methylation-mediated silencing of genes in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), we surveyed genes induced by treatment with 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-CdR) in six human hepatoma cell lines using cDNA microarray analysis and determined the methylation status of 5' CpG islands by bisulfite DNA sequencing or methylation-specific PCR. Fifty genes exhibited a >5-fold induction in response ...

Twelve to 15% of sporadic colorectal cancers display defective DNA mismatch repair (MMR), manifested as microsatellite instability (MSI). In this group of cancers, promoter hypermethylation of the MMR gene hMLH1 is strongly associated with, and believed to be the cause of, MSI. A subset of colorectal neoplastic lesions arising in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is also characterized by MSI. We...