Title of paper: Aberrant p16 methylation, gastric carcinogenesis, and biomarker
Author: Dajun Deng
Transcription silencing of tumor suppressor genes by methylation may be involved in the development of gastric cancer. Detection of abnormal methylation may be useful for the early diagnosis of gastric cancer and its precancerous lesions. The relationships between p16 methylation, gastric chemical carcinogenesis and progression of gastric abnormal growth were studied in a series of investigations among experiment rat model and population at high risk of gastric cancer.
Results show:
A) In MNNG-induced rat gastric carcinogenesis model, p16 methylation frequency was positively correlated with the severity of gastric pathologic lesions.
B) In a population-based nested case-control study, p16 methylation was observed in 5 of 21 samples of low-grade abnormal growth , which progressed to gastric cancer in 5 year follow-up and also observed in the 5 subsequent GC, but none of 21 ones without progression.
In conclusion, these results indicated that aberrant p16 methylation is an early frequent event that can contribute to gastric carcinogenesis and that p16 methylation might be a very important biomarker to predict malignant potential of gastric abnormal growth.