1. The signature of liver cancer in immune cells DNA methylation.
- Author
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Zhang, Yonghong, Petropoulos, Sophie, Liu, Jinhua, Cheishvili, David, Zhou, Rudy, Dymov, Sergiy, Li, Kang, Li, Ning, and Szyf, Moshe
- Subjects
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LIVER cancer , *IMMUNE system , *CANCER invasiveness - Abstract
Background: The idea that changes to the host immune system are critical for cancer progression was proposed a century ago and recently regained experimental support. Results: Herein, the hypothesis that hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) leaves a molecular signature in the host peripheral immune system was tested by profiling DNA methylation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and T cells from a discovery cohort (n = 69) of healthy controls, chronic hepatitis, and HCC using Illumina 450K platform and was validated in two validation sets (n= 80 and n = 48) using pyrosequencing. Conclusions: The study reveals a broad signature of hepatocellular carcinoma in PBMC and T cells DNA methylation which discriminates early HCC stage from chronic hepatitis B and C and healthy controls, intensifies with progression of HCC, and is highly enriched in immune function-related genes such as PD-1, a current cancer immunotherapy target. These data also support the feasibility of using these profiles for early detection of HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
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