The critical point for successful treatment of cancer is diagnosis at early stages of tumor development. Cancer cell-specific methylated DNA has been found in the blood of cancer patients, indicating that cell-free DNA (cfDNA) circulating in the blood is a convenient tumor-associated DNA marker. Therefore methylated cfDNA can be used as a minimally invasive diagnostic marker. We analysed the concentration of plasma cfDNA and methylation of six tumor suppressor genes in samples of 27 patients with renal cancer and 15 healthy donors as controls. The cfDNA concentrations in samples from cancer patients and healthy donors was measured using two different methods, the SYBR Green I fluorescence test and quantitative real-time PCR. Both methods revealed a statistically significant increase of cfDNA concentrations in cancer patients. Hypermethylation on cfDNA was detected for the LRRC3B (74.1%), APC (51.9%), FHIT (55.6%), and RASSF1 (62.9%) genes in patients with renal cancer. Promoter methylation of VHL and ITGA9 genes was not found on cfDNA. Our results confirmed that the cfDNA level and methylation of CpG islands of RASSF1A, FHIT, and APC genes in blood plasma can be used as noninvasive diagnostic markers of cancer.
Aim. The work is devoted to the development of less invasive tools for the colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. Methods. Q-PCR and methylation-specific PCR techniques were used in the current work. Results. We have shown that the levels of cell-free plasma DNA are higher in the CRC patients compared with the healthy donors (p < 0.01). Hypermethylation of APC, FHIT, LRRC3B and HIC1 genes was studied in the tumor and plasma samples of CRC patients. Two-stage verification for CRC screening was proposed. Conclusions. We proposed and tested a novel approach for CRC screening based on the determination of cell-free DNA and methylated DNA fragments in the plasma.
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