Results
Title

Promoter methylation analysis of WNT/β-catenin pathway regulators and its association with expression of DNMT1 enzyme in colorectal cancer.

Authors

Samaei, Nader Mansour; Yazdani, Yaghoub; Alizadeh-Navaei, Reza; Azadeh, Hossein; Farazmandfar, Touraj

Abstract

Background Aberrant DNA methylation as the most important reason making epigenetic silencing of genes is a main mechanism of gene inactivation in patients with colorectal cancer. In this study, we decided to identify promoter methylation status of ten genes encoding WNT negative regulators, and measure the expression of DNMT1 enzyme in colorectal cancer samples. Results Aberrant methylation of APC gene was statistically significant associated with age over 50 (p = 0.017), DDK3 with male (p < 0.0001), SFRP4, WIF1, and WNT5a with increasing tumor stage (p = 0.004, p = 0.029, and p = 0.004), SFRP4 and WIF1 with tumor differentiation (p = 0.009 and p = 0.031) and SFRP2 and SFRP5 with histological type (p = 0.001 and p = 0.025). The increasing number of methylated genes correlated with the expression levels of the DNMT1 mRNA. Conclusions The rate of gene promoter methylation of WNT pathway regulators is high in colorectal cancer cells. Hyper-methylation is associated with increased expression of the DNMT1 enzyme.

Subjects

METHYLATION; INCURABLE diseases; CARCINOGENS; COLON cancer; TUMORS

Publication

Journal of Biomedical Science, 2014, Vol 21, Issue 1, p1

ISSN

1021-7770

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1186/s12929-014-0073-3