Potential of DNA methylation in rectal cancer as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers.

BACKGROUND: Aberrant DNA methylation is more prominent in proximal compared with distal colorectal cancers. Although a number of methylation markers were identified for colon cancer, yet few are available for rectal cancer. METHODS: DNA methylation differences were assessed by a targeted DNA microarray for 360 marker candidates between 22 fresh frozen rectal tumour samples and 8 controls and validated by microfluidic high-throughput and methylation-sensitive qPCR in fresh frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples, respectively. The CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP) was assessed by MethyLight in FFPE material from 78 patients with pT2 and pT3 rectal adenocarcinoma. RESULTS: We identified and confirmed two novel three-gene signatures in fresh frozen samples that can distinguish tumours from adjacent tissue as well as from blood with a high sensitivity and specificity of up to 1 and an AUC of 1. In addition, methylation of individual CIMP markers was associated with specific clinical parameters such as tumour stage, therapy or patients' age. Methylation of CDKN2A was a negative prognostic factor for overall survival of patients. CONCLUSIONS: The newly defined methylation markers will be suitable for early disease detection and monitoring of rectal cancer.

High levels of histone H3 acetylation at the CMV promoter are predictive of stable expression in Chinese hamster ovary cells.

Chinese hamster ovary cells (CHO) are widely used in the production of glycosylated therapeutic proteins such as antibodies. During expansion and maintenance, CHO cell lines are prone to production instability, which may be caused by promoter silencing, loss of transgene copies, or post-transcriptional effects. Silencing of recombinant genes may be accompanied by DNA methylation and histone modification. Previously, we demonstrated that cytosine methylation of the human cytomegalovirus major immediate early promoter/enhancer (hCMV-MIE) can be used to predict instability of antibody-producing CHO cell lines. However, the high rate of false prediction motivates the search for further markers of stable promoter activity. To this end, we correlated a variety of histone modifications in the vicinity of hCMV-MIE with production stability over time. Our results suggest that acetylation of histone H3 (H3ac) is a more effective indicator of production stability than DNA methylation. Selecting cell lines with highest CMV promoter H3ac levels enriches stable expressors and improves the average stability of production cell lines. For histone H3 acetylation measurement we employed a method based on chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP). In its current form, the method is suitable to evaluate 10-20 cell lines within a few days. We propose to determine H3 acetylation once the number of candidate cell lines has been narrowed based on productivity and product quality. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 32:776-786, 2016.