BACKGROUND Total mesorectal excision (TME) remains commonplace for T1-2 rectal cancer owing to fear of undertreating a small proportion of patients with node-positive disease. Molecular stratification may predict cancer progression. It could be used to select patients for organ-preserving surgery if specific biomarkers were validated. METHODS Gene methylation was quantified using bisulphite p...

OBJECTIVE To examine epigenetic events of aberrant promoter methylation as diagnostic markers in primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma using a novel multigene approach. Promoter methylation-mediated silencing is a hallmark of several established tumor suppressor genes. Changes in DNA methylation have been reported to occur early in carcinogenesis and therefore are potentially important ...

In neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and prion disease it has been shown that host genetic background can have a significant effect on susceptibility. Indeed, human genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have implicated several candidate genes. Understanding such genetic susceptibility is relevant to risks of developing variant CJD (vCJD) in populations exposed to bovine spongifo...

Retinoic acid receptor β (RARβ) has been proposed to act as a tumor suppressor in breast cancer. In contrast, recent data have shown that RARβ promotes ERBB2-induced mammary gland tumorigenesis through remodeling of the stromal compartment and activation of cancer-associated fibroblasts. However, it is currently unknown whether RARβ oncogenic activity is specific to ERBB2-induced tumors, or whe...

Programmed cell death during chicken ciliary ganglion (CG) development is mostly discussed as an extrinsically regulated process, guided either by the establishment of a functional balance between preganglionic and postganglionic activity or the availability of target-derived neurotrophic factors. We found that the expression of the gene coding for the nuclear retinoic acid receptor β (RARB) is...

BACKGROUND Inactivation of tumour-related genes by promoter hypermethylation is a common epigenetic event in the development of a variety of tumours. AIM To investigate in primary uveal melanoma the status of promoter methylation of genes thought to be involved in tumour development: p16, TIMP3, RASSF1, RARB, FHIT, hTERT and APC. METHODS Gene promoter methylation was studied by methylation-...

Nuclear retinoic acid receptors (RARs) and retinoid X receptors (RXRs) are thought to mediate most of the effects of retinoids on cell growth and differentiation. Despite expressing abundant levels of RARb mRNA, lung adenocarcinoma H1792 cells are resistant to the growthinhibitory effects of all-trans-retinoic acid, suggesting that they have a defect in retinoid signaling. To determine whether ...

Aberrant DNA methylation plays a pivotal role in carcinogenesis and its mapping is likely to provide biomarkers for improved diagnostic and risk assessment in prostate cancer (PCa). We quantified and compared absolute methylation levels among 28 candidate genes in 48 PCa and 29 benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) samples using the pyrosequencing (PSQ) method to identify genes with diagnostic and ...

Gene promoter methylation may be used a potential biomarker for detecting solid tumor including cervical cancer. Here, we used methylation sensitive-high resolution melting (MS-HRM) analysis to detecting promoter methylation ratios of DAPK1, MGMT and RARB gene in patients with different cervical disease grade. The detection of gene promoter methylation was conducted in two hundred fifty patient...

We have investigated the frequency of methylation of several tumour suppressor genes in uveal melanoma. As the loss of one copy of chromosome 3 (monosomy 3), which is found in about half of these tumours, is tightly associated with metastatic disease, a special emphasis was laid on genes located on this chromosome, including the fragile histidine triad (FHIT), von Hippel-Lindau (VHL), beta-cate...