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Updated: Oct 14, 2025

Mosaic Zebrafish Transgenesis for Functional Genomic Analysis of Candidate Cooperative Genes in Tumor Pathogenesis
Published on: March 31, 2015
Predicting amplification of MYCN using CpG methylation biomarkers in neuroblastoma
Abdulazeez Giwa1, Sophia Catherine Rossouw1, Azeez Fatai2
1SAMRC Bioinformatics Unit, South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 7535, South Africa.
Abstract:
Background: Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial solid tumor in childhood. Amplification of MYCN in neuroblastoma is a predictor of poor prognosis. Materials and methods: DNA methylation data from the TARGET data matrix were stratified into MYCN amplified and non-amplified groups. Differential methylation analysis, clustering, recursive feature elimination (RFE), machine learning (ML), Cox regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier estimates were performed. Results and Conclusion: 663 CpGs were differentially methylated between the two groups. A total of 25 CpGs were selected by RFE for clustering and ML, and a 100% clustering accuracy was obtained. ML validation on three external datasets produced high accuracy scores of 100%, 97% and 93%. Eight survival-associated CpGs were also identified. Therapeutic interventions may need to be targeted to patient subgroups.

