Identification of kidney transplant patients at risk for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma by differentially methylated regions in T cells

We aim to discover differentially methylated regions (DMRs) in peripheral T cells involved in de novo cSCC development after kidney transplantation. This was a retrospective study on biobank patient material. We matched kidney transplant patients with (future) cSCC to those without cSCC and studied genome-wide DNA methylation (450k arrays) of T cells before transplantation. Pure T cell samples of 54 patients were analyzed. No replicates are included, all samples are unique. Kidney transplant patients with a (future) cSCC were matched to control kidney transplant patients without cSCC. All these samples were taken before transplantation. In addition to the comparison between cSCC and non-cSCC samples, we also studied samples of 11 cSCC patients of which a sample was available both before and after transplantation to asses the stability of the DNA methylation results after transplantation