J Korean Med Sci.  2007 Apr;22(2):311-317. 10.3346/jkms.2007.22.2.311.

Methylation Profiles of CpG Island Loci in Major Types of Human Cancers

• Park SY
• Kim BH
• Kim JH
• Cho NY
• Choi M
• Yu EJ
• Lee S
• Kang GH

• KMID: 1713193
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2007.22.2.311

Abstract

Several reports have described aberrant methylation in various types of human cancers. However, the interpretation of methylation frequency in various human cancers has some limitations because of the different materials and methods used for methylation analysis. To gain an insight into the role of DNA hypermethylation in human cancers and allow direct comparison of tissue specific methylation, we generated methylation profiles in 328 human cancers, including 24 breast, 48 colon, 61 stomach, 48 liver, 37 larynx, 24 lung, 40 prostate, and 46 uterine cervical cancer samples by analyzing CpG island hypermethylation of 13 genes using methylation-specific PCR. The mean numbers of methylated genes were 6.5, 4.4, 3.6, 3.4, 3.1, 3.1, 3.1, and 2.1 in gastric, liver, prostate, larynx, colon, lung, uterine cervix, and in breast cancer samples, respectively. The number of genes that were methylated at a frequency of more than 40% in each tumor type ranged from nine (stomach) to one (breast). Generally genes frequently methylated in a specific cancer type differed from those methylated in other cancer types. The findings indicate that aberrant CpG island hypermethylation is a frequent finding in human cancers of various tissue types, and each tissue type has its own distinct methylation pattern.

Keyword

Carcinomas; CpG Island; DNA Methylations; Tumor Suppressor Gene

MeSH Terms

Quantitative Trait Loci/*genetics
Polymerase Chain Reaction
Neoplasms/*genetics
Humans
Genetic Predisposition to Disease/genetics
Gene Frequency/genetics
DNA, Neoplasm/*genetics
*DNA Methylation
CpG Islands/*genetics
Chromosome Mapping/*methods

Figure

• 

  Fig. 1 Representative samples of MSP analysis for the methylated (M) and unmethylated (U) forms of six CpG island loci (APC, GSTP1, hMLH1, p16, RASSF1A, and RUNX3) in stomach cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. The positive control was a placental DNA treated with Sss1 methylase before bisulfite modification, and the negative control was distilled water without template DNA. Marker 1 and 2, 100 bp DNA ladder of 14 ng and 3.5 ng, respectively; +, positive control; -, negative control.

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