Evaluation of ATIC and RASSF-1 promoter methylation in tumor tissue and free margin in patients with lung cancer

Abstract

Accumulation of genetic and epigenetic alteration in respiratory epithelium is one of the main causes of lung cancer. Hypermethylation of genes promoter is an epigenetic event, and is responsible to tumor suppressor genes inactivation as well as oncogenes activation. This study aimed to quantify methylation status in promoter of RASSF1 and ATIC genes as well as identify their relation to clinicopathological features of lung tumor in Iranian patients. Methods: In this research, 50 samples of tumor tissue and 50 samples of tumor margins of patients with NSCLC lung cancer were collected from the same patients. First, DNAs were extracted, and after the treatment, the level of gene methylation was checked with the semi-quantitative MS-HRM method. In this study, pvalue<0.05 is considered as a significant level in all statistical tests. Results: The results of the gene showed a significant increase in methylation in the promoter region of the RASSF1 gene and a significant decrease in the ATIC promoter in tumor samples compared to margin samples. The methylation changes of these genes are also related to some pathological characteristics of patients such as metastasis.