DNA methylation:potential biomarker in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Way-Champ Mah 1,2,3and Caroline GL Lee 1,2,3,4*

Introduction

Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC)is one of the most fre-quent cancers in the world and annually,about 600,000patients died of liver cancer [1].This disease is often as-sociated with poor prognosis because patients are either diagnosed at very late stage or experienced recurrence after resection [2].In fact,more than half of HCC pa-tients died within 12months post diagnosis,and less than 6%of them have an average survival rate of 5years [3].Liver transplantation and resection are the only two curative therapies available;however,in order to qualify for such therapies,patients need to be diagnosed early with HCC [4].Presently,serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP)concentration and hepatic ultrasonography are used in

HCC surveillance program,where high risk patients are screened for HCC in every six months [5].As for actual diagnosis,invasive biopsy and expensive imaging tools such as ultrasonography,spiral computed tomography (CT)and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)are used [4].AFP measurement is merely used as adjunct diag-nostic tool because of its variability in specificity and sensitivity [5,6].Equally important to note is that apart from AFP level and tumor staging classification such as the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC)staging sys-tem,there is no good prognostic marker that can classify patients and predict survival outcome [7-9].The large number of HCC associated deaths clearly reflects the shortcomings of current diagnostic and prognostic tools.This underscores the importance of discovering novel and effective biomarkers that can improve overall cli-nical management of HCC.

With the advance of genomic technologies,plethora of molecular data is now available for translational research.Gene expression signatures and microRNA profiles are

*Correspondence:caroline_lee@http://www.doczj.com/doc/e376b41680eb6294dc886c2f.html.sg 1

Department of Biochemistry,Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine,National University of Singapore,Singapore 117597,Singapore 2

Division of Medical Sciences,Humphrey Oei Institute of Cancer Research,National Cancer Centre Singapore,Level 6,Lab 5,11Hospital Drive,Singapore 169610,Singapore

Full list of author information is available at the end of the

article

?2014Mah and Lee;licensee BioMed Central Ltd.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://www.doczj.com/doc/e376b41680eb6294dc886c2f.html/licenses/by/2.0),which permits unrestricted use,distribution,and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly credited.The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://www.doczj.com/doc/e376b41680eb6294dc886c2f.html/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)applies to the data made available in this article,unless otherwise stated.

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