Integrated analysis of genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression profiles identifies potential novel biomarkers of rectal cancer [expression]

DNA methylation was suggested as the promising biomarker for rectal cancer diagnosis. However, it remains a great challenge to search for the optimal methylation biomarkers to obtain ideal diagnostic performance. We aimed to identify new molecular markers for rectal cancer by evaluating their epigenomic and transcriptomic profiles. Genome-wide methylation analysis revealed 18568 probes with significant methylation differences between the six rectal cancer and paired normal samples. Transcriptome profiling presented 773 low-expressed and 1,161 over-expressed genes. After merging the DNA methylation with gene expression data, we identified a panel of 36 genes with an inverse correlation between methylation and gene expression levels. A genome-wide DNA methylation approach merged with array-based gene expression profiles allowed identifying a number of novel, epigenetically regulated candidate tumor-related genes in rectal carcinogenesis, which can be a good strategy to discover optimal DNA methylation diagnostic panels. Genome wide gene expression profiling of paired rectal cancers and adjacent normal tissues. The Illumina HumanHT-12 V4.0 expression beadchip was used to obtain gene expression profiles in all samples. Samples included six pairs of rectal cancers and adjacent normal tissues. Total RNA obtained from rectal cancers and paired adjacent normal tissues.