Evaluation of P38 Gene Expression and Promoter Methylation of this Gene in Tumor and Marginal Samples of Thyroid Cancer Patients

Abstract

Thyroid cancer is one of the most prevalence malignancies worldwide. Genetic and epigenetic alterations are one of the main causes of thyroid tumor that is responsible to activation of oncogenes as well as inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. This research aimed to investigate relationship of promoter methylation patterns with expression of P38α in Iranian patients with thyroid cancer. Methods: We collected 40 thyroid tumor sample and 40 adjacent normal thyroid samples from 40 Iranian patients with thyroid cancer. Promoter methylation pattern of P38α gene was investigated by methylation-sensitive high-resolution melting (MS-HRM) method. Moreover, mRNA expression of P38α was investigated by Real-Time PCR method. Further validation of the obtained results was performed by Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset.. Results: The obtained results indicated that expression of P38α (MAPK-14) gene in thyroid cancer sample was considerably higher than tumor margin sample. Also, P38α gene promoter methylation was significantly higher in thyroid margin tissue as compared tumor tissue. These results were additionally confirmed by TCGA analysis. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed a high accuracy of P38α gene expression as a diagnostic biomarker for thyroid malignancy