Frontiers in Endocrinology (Mar 2022)

Integrative Analysis of DNA Methylation and Gene Expression Identified Follicular Thyroid Cancer-Specific Diagnostic Biomarkers

  • Yunjin Yao,
  • Peiwei Xu,
  • Tianxing Ying,
  • Yue Wang,
  • Xumeng Wang,
  • Liqi Shu,
  • Zhe Mo,
  • Zhijian Chen,
  • Xiaofeng Wang,
  • Weibin Wang,
  • Lisong Teng,
  • Xiaoming Lou

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2021.736068
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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The diagnosis of follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) prior surgical resection remains a challenge, as routine screening methods, such as ultrasound or even FNAB, could not diagnose FTC preoperatively. Here, we performed an integrative analysis of DNA methylation and RNA array data from our own cohort (14 Follicular thyroid carcinoma vs 16 Benign thyroid lesion) to identify thyroid cancer-specific DNA methylation markers. We first identified differentially methylated and expressed genes and examined their correlations. Candidate DNA methylation sites were selected and further verified in validation set. Among all candidate methylation sites, cg06928209 was the most promising site as a molecular marker for early diagnosis, with a sensitivity of 90%, a specificity of 80% and an AUC of 0.77. Overall, our study demonstrates the potential use of methylation markers in FTC diagnosis and may boost the development of new epigenetic therapies.

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