Genome-wide DNA methylation profiling in tongue squamous cell carcinoma

Objectives: To provide a comprehensive characterization of DNA methylome of oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) and identify novel tumor-specific DNA methylation markers for early detection using saliva.Material and Methods: Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis including six OTSCC matched adjacent non-tumoral tissue and saliva was performed using Infinium MethylationEPIC array. Differentially methylated levels of selected genes in our OTSCC cohort were further validated using OTSCC methylation data from The Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA). The methylation levels of a set of tumor-specific hypermethylated genes associated with a downregulated expression were evaluated in saliva. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were performed to assess the diagnostic value of DNA methylation markers.Results: A total of 25,890 CpGs (20,505 hypomethylated and 5385 hypermethylated) were differentially methylated (DMCpGs) between OTSCC and adjacent non-tumoral tissue. Hypermethylation of 11 tumor-specific genes was validated in OTSCC TCGA cohort. Of these 11 genes, A2BP1, ANK1, ALDH1A2, GFRA1, TTYH1, and PDE4B were also hypermethylated in saliva. These six salivary methylated genes showed high diagnostic accuracy (>= 0.800) for discriminating patients from controls.Conclusions: This is the first largest genome-wide DNA methylation study on OTSCC that identifies a group of novel tumor-specific DNA methylation markers with diagnostic potential in saliva.

Automated summary

This is the first large-scale genome-wide DNA methylation study on OTSCC, identifying a group of novel tumor-specific DNA methylation markers with diagnostic potential in saliva.