Investigation of DNAmethylation of TWIST Gene in Breast Cancer and Its Relationship to Histopathological Features

BACKGROUND: Promoter hypermethylation and global hypomethylation in the human genome are hallmarks of most cancers. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to assess the methylation profile patterns of TWIST gene and to investigate the relationship of methylation with pathological features. METHODS: Romoter CpGisland methylation of TWIST which can be related in breast cancer was performed by methylation-sensitive high resolution melting (MS-HRM) analysis. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples of 80 patients with a diagnosis of primary breast cancer from Eskisehir Osmangazi University medical faculty of Oncology Clinic were included. RESULTS: In our study, the promoter hypermethylation frequency of TWIST gene was 25.0%. With these results, when the prognostic factors of the patients were analyzed, tumor stage and age were found to be meaningless with the hypermethylation of TWIST gene, but found to be significant with lymph node positivity, ER positivity, PR negativity, and HER2/NEU negativity. CONCLUSION: Our study is important as being the first study that analyzes association between histopathologic type and TWIST gene promotor methylation status in Turkish population.