Aberrant methylation of the 8p22 tumor suppressor gene DLC1 in renal cell carcinoma

Qian Zhang, Jianming Ying, Kai Zhang, Hongyu Li, Ka Man Ng, Yayuan Zhao, Qun He, Xinyu Yang, Dianqi Xin, Shuen Kuei Liao, Qian Tao*, Jie Jin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

39 Scopus citations

Abstract

Epigenetic mechanisms involving DNA methylation and chromatin remodeling are important in silencing tumor suppressor genes (TSG) in various malignancies, including renal cell carcinoma (RCC). DLC1 (deleted in liver cancer 1)/ARHGAP7 is a recently identified 8p22 candidate TSG. Frequent methylation of the DLC1 promoter with resultant gene silencing has been reported in several tumors, but not in RCC yet. We examined DLC1 promoter methylation in 34 primary RCCs and the corresponding non-malignant tissues, and the correlation of DLC1 methylation with the clinicopathological characteristics of RCC patients. Although DLC1 methylation and downregulation were only detected in one of seven RCC cell lines using methylation-specific PCR (MSP) and semi-quantitative reverse-transcription PCR, we found that the DLC1 promoter was methylated in 35% (12/34) of primary RCC tumors, which was further confirmed by direct sequencing of MSP products and high-resolution bisulfite genomic sequencing. In contrast, only one of the 34 (3%) non-malignant renal tissues had weak methylation. Aberrant DLC1 methylation appeared to be a relatively early event during renal tumorigenesis since 33% of the RCC tumors with pT1 (TNM staging) showed methylation, which is similar to other late stage tumors. Thus, our results demonstrated that DLC1 methylation occurs in a subset of RCC tumors and may play a role in renal carcinogenesis.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)220-226
Number of pages7
JournalCancer Letters
Volume249
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 08 05 2007

Keywords

  • Carcinoma
  • DLC1 gene
  • Methylation
  • Renal
  • Tumor suppressor gene

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