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Updated: May 12, 2026

Genome-Wide Analysis of DNA Methylation in Gastrointestinal Cancer
Published on: September 18, 2020
No evidence for PALB2 methylation in high-grade serous ovarian cancer
Thomas Mikeska1, Kathryn Alsop,
1Molecular Pathology Research and Development Laboratory, Department of Pathology, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, East Melbourne, VIC, Australia. Alexander.Dobrovic@petermac.org.
Background:
High-grade serous ovarian cancers are a distinct histological subtype of ovarian cancer often characterised by a dysfunctional BRCA/Fanconi anaemia (BRCA/FA) pathway, which is critical to the homologous recombination DNA repair machinery. An impaired BRCA/FA pathway sensitises tumours to the treatment with DNA cross-linking agents and to PARP inhibitors. The vast majority of inactivating mutations in the BRCA/FA pathway are in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and occur predominantly in high-grade serous cancer. Another member of the BRCA/FA pathway, PALB2 (FANCN), was reported to have been inactivated by DNA methylation in some sporadic ovarian cancers. We therefore sought to investigate the role of PALB2 methylation in high-grade serous ovarian cancers.
Finding:
PALB2 methylation was investigated in 92 high-grade serous ovarian cancer samples using methylation-sensitive high-resolution melting analysis. DNA methylation of PALB2 was not detected in any of the ovarian cancer samples investigated.
Conclusion:
Epigenetic silencing by DNA methylation of PALB2 is not a common event in high-grade serous ovarian cancers.
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