methylation profile of exfoliated cells from HNSCC patients

What is it about?

Background: Silencing of tumor suppressor genes plays a vital role in head and neck carcinogenesis. The aims of this study were to determine the methylation profile of exfoliated tumors cells collected from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients and to evaluate its prognostic significance. Methods: The methylation profile and level of a 20 genes-panel were evaluated by QMSP in exfoliated tumor cell samples from 96 HNSCC patients. Results: CCNA1 (60.4%), DCC (54.2%) and TIMP3 (35.4%) were frequently methylated in these samples. Patients with exfoliated tumors cells positive for DCC methylation showed a trend toward a lower local recurrence-free survival.. Conclusions: These findings indicate that a low invasive method could be used to access the methylation profile of exfoliated cells from HNSCC patients. Moreover, our data provide evidence that hypermethylation of DCC could be useful as prognostic indicator for this malignance.

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