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Epigenetic field defects associated with bladder cancer
AACR 100th Annual Meeting
Profiling of DNA methylation changes that occur during bladder cancer revealed an epigenetic field defect in patients with the disease.
Gangning Liang, MD, an associate professor in the department of urology at the University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, presented the results at the AACR 100th Annual Meeting in Denver. He said that because these loci are only methylated in cancerous bladders, they may serve as markers identifying healthy people at risk for the disease.
“We think this result has clinical use and benefit for the patient because we can detect this meth change in patients’ urine,” Liang said at the meeting. “We can use a noninvasive assay and monitor for tumor recurrence. We also may be able to screen for bladder cancer in high-risk populations.”
The researchers measured DNA methylation in bladder urothelium samples from 12 age-matched cancer-free participants, 52 noninvasive tumors and 39 invasive bladder tumors and their corresponding healthy tissue. They found 158 hypermethylated loci and 356 hypomethylated loci in transitional cell carcinoma.
The researchers also uncovered 21 loci that were hypermethylated in both tumors and the corresponding healthy tissue.
“Aberrant DNA methylation provides markers that may predict high-risk patients, detect the presence of noninvasive and invasive tumors and detect the recurrence of tumors after resection,” the researchers wrote in the abstract.– by Jason Harris
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