Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 8, 2025
Genome-Wide Analysis of DNA Methylation in Gastrointestinal Cancer
Published on: September 18, 2020
Pre-Operative Evaluation of DNA Methylation Profile in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Can Predict Tumor Aggressive
Davide B Gissi1, Viscardo P Fabbri2, Andrea Gabusi1
1Section of Oral Science, Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, 40159 Bologna, Italy.
Background:
Prognosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is difficult to exactly assess on pre-operative biopsies. Since OSCC DNA methylation profile has proved to be a useful pre-operative diagnostic tool, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic impact of DNA methylation profile to discriminate OSCC with high and low aggressive potential.
Methods:
36 OSCC cases underwent neoplastic cells collection by gentle brushing of the lesion, before performing a pre-operative biopsy. The CpG islands methylation status of 13 gene (ZAP70, ITGA4, KIF1A, PARP15, EPHX3, NTM, LRRTM1, FLI1, MiR193, LINC00599, MiR296, TERT, GP1BB) was studied by bisulfite Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). A Cox proportional hazards model via likelihood-based component-wise boosting was used to evaluate the prognostic power of the CpG sites.
Results:
The boosting estimation identified five CpGs with prognostic significance: EPHX3-24, EPHX3-26, ITGA4-3, ITGA4-4, and MiR193-3. The combination of significant CpGs provided promising results for adverse events prediction (Brier score = 0.080, C-index = 0.802 and AUC = 0.850). ITGA4 had a strong prognostic power in patients with early OSCC.
Conclusions:
These data confirm that the study of methylation profile provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms of OSCC and can allow a better OSCC prognostic stratification even before surgery.
