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// Anastasia E. Kottorou 1 , Anna G. Antonacopoulou 1 , Foteinos-Ioannis D. Dimitrakopoulos 1, 3 , Georgia Diamantopoulou 2 , Chaido Sirinian 1 , Melpomeni Kalofonou 1, 6 , Theodoros Theodorakopoulos 2 , Chrysa Oikonomou 3 , Evangelos C. Katsakoulis 2 , Angelos Koutras 1, 3 , Thomas Makatsoris 1, 3 , Nikos Demopoulos 4 , Georgia Stephanou 4 , Michalis Stavropoulos 5 , Konstantinos C. Thomopoulos 2 and Haralabos P. Kalofonos 1, 3 1 Clinical and Molecular Oncology Laboratory, Division of Oncology, Medical School, University of Patras, Patras, Greece 2 Division of Gastroenterology, University Hospital of Patras, Patras, Greece 3 Division of Oncology, University Hospital of Patras, Patras, Greece 4 Division of Genetics, Cell and Developmental Biology, Department of Biology, University of Patras, Patras, Greece 5 Department of Surgery, Medical School, University of Patras, Patras, Greece 6 Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK Correspondence to: Haralabos P. Kalofonos, email: kalofonos@upatras.gr Keywords: transcribed-ultra conserved regions; colorectal cancer and adenomas; tissue and plasma methylation; screening biomarker; expression levels Received: January 12, 2017 Accepted: March 02, 2018 Published: April 20, 2018 ABSTRACT Expression of Transcribed Ultraconserved Regions (T-UCRs) is often deregulated in cancer. The present study assesses the expression and methylation of three T-UCRs (Uc160, Uc283 and Uc346) in colorectal cancer (CRC) and explores the potential of T-UCR methylation in circulating DNA for the detection of adenomas and adenocarcinomas. Expression levels of Uc160, Uc283 and Uc346 were lower in neoplastic tissues from 64 CRC patients (statistically significant for Uc160, p