Promoter hypermethylation of TERT is associated with hepatocellular carcinoma in the Han Chinese population

A recent study by Castelo-Branco, P., et al. Methylation of the TERT promoter and risk stratification of childhood brain tumours: an integrative genomic and molecular study. Lancet Oncol 2013;14:534-542 found upstream of the transcription start site (UTSS) hypermethylation of TERT is associated with tumor progression and poor prognosis in paediatric brain tumours. They interpreted that the UTSS region of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene is a potentially accessible biomarker for various cancers. This study, we aimed to explore the role of TERT in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and to investigate whether the UTSS region of TERT promoter shows the same methylation pattern in HCC. Overall design: We analyzed a methylation assay of TERT including the UTSS region in 125 paired HCC samples using Mass Array EpiTyper (Sequenom, SanDiego, CA, USA). To obtain the relationship between TERT promoter methylation status and TERT expression level, we analysed a validation group of 12 paired HCC samples and acquired the FPKM value of TERT gene.