Efficacy and Feasibility of the Epithelial Cell Adhesion Molecule (EpCAM) Immunomagnetic Cell Sorter for Studies of DNA Methylation in Colorectal Cancer

Autor: Alessandra Failli, Annalisa Legitimo, Francesca Migheli, Fabio Coppedè, John C. Mathers, Roberto Spisni, Paolo Miccoli, Lucia Migliore, Rita Consolini
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2013
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Vol 15, Iss 1, Pp 44-57 (2013)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1422-0067
DOI: 10.3390/ijms15010044
Popis: The aim of this work was to assess the impact on measurements of methylation of a panel of four cancer gene promoters of purifying tumor cells from colorectal tissue samples using the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM)-immunomagnetic cell enrichment approach. We observed that, on average, methylation levels were higher in enriched cell fractions than in the whole tissue, but the difference was significant only for one out of four studied genes. In addition, there were strong correlations between methylation values for individual samples of whole tissue and the corresponding enriched cell fractions. Therefore, assays on whole tissue are likely to provide reliable estimates of tumor-specific methylation of cancer genes. However, tumor cell tissue separation using immunomagnetic beads could, in some cases, give a more accurate value of gene promoter methylation than the analysis of the whole cancer tissue, although relatively expensive and time-consuming. The efficacy and feasibility of the immunomagnetic cell sorting for methylation studies are discussed.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals