Sajibu S, Sonder E, Tiwari A, Orjuela S, Parker HR, Frans OT, Gubler C, Marra G, Robinson MD. Validation of hypermethylated DNA regions found in colorectal cancers as potential aging-independent biomarkers of precancerous colorectal lesions.
BMC Cancer 2023;
23:998. [PMID:
37853362 PMCID:
PMC10585861 DOI:
10.1186/s12885-023-11487-w]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2023] [Accepted: 10/06/2023] [Indexed: 10/20/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND
We previously identified 16,772 colorectal cancer-associated hypermethylated DNA regions that were also detectable in precancerous colorectal lesions (preCRCs) and unrelated to normal mucosal aging. We have now conducted a study to validate 990 of these differentially methylated DNA regions (DMRs) in a new series of preCRCs.
METHODS
We used targeted bisulfite sequencing to validate these 990 potential biomarkers in 59 preCRC tissue samples (41 conventional adenomas, 18 sessile serrated lesions), each with a patient-matched normal mucosal sample. Based on differential DNA methylation tests, a panel of candidate DMRs was chosen on a subset of our cohort and then validated on the remaining part of our cohort and two publicly available datasets with respect to their stratifying potential between preCRCs and normal mucosa.
RESULTS
Strong statistical significance for the difference in methylation levels was observed across the full set of 990 investigated DMRs. From these, a selected candidate panel of 30 DMRs correctly identified 58/59 tumors (area under the receiver operating curve: 0.998).
CONCLUSIONS
These validated DNA hypermethylation markers can be exploited to develop more accurate noninvasive colorectal tumor screening assays.
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