Tumor DNA methylation profiling of pediatric patients with adrenocortical tumors

Abnormal DNA methylation contributes to tumor progression and is emerging as a prognostic marker in several types of cancers. To investigate whether DNA methylation is associated with Pediatric Adrenocortical Tumor (pACT) presentation and patient prognosis, we analyzed the methylation profile of 57 tumors (Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation850 BeadChip) and patients’ clinicopathological features and outcome. DNA from 57 microdissected, fresh frozen tumor samples from pediatric patients was extracted using the QIAamp DNA Mini Kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany) according to the manufacturer's instruction. DNA was commisioned to the University of Southern California Keck Genomics Platform (Los Angeles, CA, USA), where it was bisulfite-converted using tht EZ DNA methylation kit (Zymo Research, Irvine, CA) , as provided by the manufacturer, and hybridized to the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation850 BeadChip as specified by Illumina.