Association between gene expression and promoter methylation of CGB3, GSTP1 and NOP56 genes and their potential in biomarker development - associated cervical cancer.

Abstract

Binding of DNMT1-E7 complex can induce promoter methylation in tumor suppressor genes, such as CCNA1, CADM1 leading to their expression suppression and thus, cause cancer progression. This research establishes the association between methylation-related expression of CGB3 and NOP56 genes in cervical cell lines treated with 5-Azacytidine drug. Using MSP-PCR and qPCR, it was found that the methylation of CGB3 and NOP56 were significantly decreased as concentration of 5-Aza increased and this was inversely related with their expression. This demonstrated the association between gene methylation and the regulation of gene expression which were assessed by 5’-aza drug treatment. Of note, the identification of malignancy in screening PAP samples (included ASC-US) based on cytology and histology, were determined by evaluating the performance of methylation status of CGB3 and NOP56 genes using MSP-PCR. Based on statistical results using Python programming, CGB3 gene showed high sensitivity and specificity compared to NOP56 with significant diagnostic ability to distinguish between the “Normal” and “Abnormal” samples. This indicates that CGB3 has more potential to distinguish and identify the malignancy in cervical screening PAP samples at their early stage.