Patent Application: US-52264808-A

Abstract:
a method of detecting a predisposition to , or the incidence of , cancer in a sample comprises detecting an epigenetic change in at least one gene selected from an ndrg4 / ndrg2 subfamily gene , gata4 , osmr , gata5 , sfrp1 , adam23 , jph3 , sfrp2 , apc , mgmt , tfpi2 , bnip3 , foxe1 , syne1 , s0x17 , phactr3 and jam3 , wherein detection of the epigenetic change is indicative of a predisposition to , or the incidence of , cancer . also described are pharmacogenetic methods for determining suitable treatment regimens for cancer and methods for treating cancer patients , based around selection of the patients according to the methods of the invention . the present invention is also concerned with improved methods of collecting , processing and analyzing samples , in particular body fluid samples . these methods may be useful in diagnosing , staging or otherwise characterizing various diseases . the invention also relates to methods for identifying , diagnosing , staging or otherwise characterizing cancers , in particular gastrointestinal cancers such as colorectal cancers , gastric cancers and oesophageal cancers . the methods of the invention relate , inter alia , to isolating and analyzing the human dna component from faecal samples and blood - based samples .

Description:
a . ndrg4 : bisulfite sequencing of colorectal cancer tissue ( t ), normal colon mucosa ( n ), the methylated colorectal cancer cell line ( hct116 ) and the unmethylated cell line sw480 . white and black squares represent methylated and unmethylated cpg dinucleotides in ndrg4 respectively . each row represents a single clone . location of the cpg are relative to the transcription start site . the location of the msp primers is positions 20 to 23 and 31 to 34 respectively . b . ndrg2 : bisulfite sequencing of colon carcinoma cell lines ( rko and ls174t ). white and black squares represent methylated and unmethylated cpg dinucleotides in ndrg2b respectively . fig2 . relative expression of ndrg4 after treatment with dac and tsa compared to untreated cell lines . cyclophilin was used as a reference gene for expression normalisation . fig3 . a . methylated ndrg4 sequence ( seq id no : 524 )( nm — 020465 : − 1000 to + 1000 relative to tss ) bisulfite sequence primers in mid - grey ; flank primers for the nested msp are underlined ; methylated msp primers in light - grey ; unmethylated primers in dark - grey and light - grey fig3 . b . methylated ndrg2 sequence ( seq id no : 525 ). bisulfite sequence primers in mid - grey ; flank primers for the nested msp are underlined ; methylated msp primers in light - grey ; unmethylated primers in dark - grey and light - grey fig4 . sentivity of different markers , with 100 % specificity . x axis =: % positive in real time qmsp ; y axis =: different markers . case : n = 65 carcinoma &# 39 ; s ; controls : n = 33 histologically normal resection ends fig5 shows a decision tree for determination of the methylation status of the gene of interest linked to colorectal cancer in clinical samples ( real - time msp ). fig6 presents results of real - time msp carried out on 9 different genes for 34 colon carcinoma tissue samples , 16 colon adenoma tissue samples and 63 breast ( 20 ), lung ( 21 ) and bladder ( 22 ) cancer samples . sensitivity performance for each gene is shown wherein the analytical cut - off was set to give 100 % specificity ( based on the non - cancerous controls ). fig7 . presents results of real - time msp carried out on 10 different genes for 34 colon carcinoma tissue samples , 16 colon adenoma tissue samples and 59 samples from patients with cancer other than crc . sensitivity performance for each gene is shown wherein the analytical cut - off was set to give 100 % specificity ( based on the non - cancerous controls ), except for jph3 where 95 % specificity was obtained . fig8 . presents results of real - time msp carried out on 8 different genes for plasma training set 1 and 5 different genes for plasma training set 2 . plasma training set 1 includes 34 samples with no suspicious findings , 25 samples from patients with cancers other than colon and 42 samples from patients covering all stages of crc , with 81 % representing stages i - iii of disease . plasma training set 2 was tested on 64 samples with no suspicious findings , 49 adenomas , 25 samples from patients with cancer other than colon cancer and 78 samples from patients covering all stages of crc , with 76 % representing stages i - iii of disease . fig9 . is an overview of the ndrg4 study showing the patient groups which were investigated . fig1 . schematic representation of the promoter region of ndrg4 . a dense cpg island from − 556 to + 869 relative to the transcription start site ( tss ) ( indicated by a curved arrow ) is shown . locations of cpg dinucleotides ( representated by |), orf ndrg4 ( as indicated with a grey rectangle ) and the region of the hypermethylated fragment identified by methylation specific pcr ( msp ), quantative msp ( qmsp ) and bisulfite sequencing ( bs ) primers are indicated . fig1 a . results of methylation specific pcr ( msp ) with primer pair 2 to detect dna methylation in eight different crc cell lines . fig1 b bisulfite sequencing of two crc cell lines , namely hct116 and sw480 . six different clones were sequenced . each row represents an individual cloned allele that was sequenced following sodium bisulfite dna modification . each box indicate a cpg dinucleotide ( black box ; methylated cpg site , white box ; unmethylated cpg site ) fig1 c ndrg4 expression in colon cancer cell lines ( rko and hct116 ) after treatment with the methylation inhibitor 5 - aza - 2 ′- doxycytidine ( dac ). fig1 a . bisulfite sequencing of three cases of cancers ( t ) and their matched normal non malignant mucosa tissue ( n ). six different clones were sequenced . fig1 b levels of ndrg4 transcript expression measured by realtime pcr in colon cancer tissue ( labelled for t ) and matched normal colon tissue samples ( labelled for n ) for three different persons . for each patient , levels of ndrg4 expression in the normal mucosa tissue were set to equal 1 . the experiments were performed three times . fig1 c localization of ndrg4 expression . immunohistochemical staining of ndrg4 in normal mucosa and colon tumor shows no staining in cancer cells but clear staining in the nuclei of normal epithelial cells . colon cancer cell lines ls174t , hct116 , ht29 , rko , caco2 , colo205 , sw48 and sw480 were used for msp , bisulfite sequencing and real time ( reexpression ) rt - pcr ( 1 mm dac and 300 nm tsa ). formalin - fixed , paraffin - embedded colon mucosa tissue of colorectal cancer patients and controls over 50 years of age was retrospectively collected from the archive of the dept . of pathology of the university hospital maastricht . approval was obtained by the medical ethical committee ( mec ) of the maastricht university and the university hospital maastricht . if present , also normal and adenoma tissue was collected from these cases . the control group consists of histologically normal biopsy material from patients undergoing endoscopy because of non - specific abdominal complaints , adenoma biopsies from patients which did not develop colorectal cancers within 5 - 10 years . colorectal cancers patients and controls were excluded if being diagnosed with additional cancers other than non - melanoma skin cancer . dna methylation in the cpg islands of the gene promoter was determined by bisulfite treatment of genomic dna with sodium bisulfite followed by msp . briefly , bisulfite modification of genomic dna was carried using the ez dna methylation kit ( zymo research ). msp analysis on dna retrieved from formalin - fixed , paraffin embedded tissue was facilitated by first amplifying the dna with flanking pcr primers which amplify bisulfite - modified dna but do not make the distinction between methylated or unmethylated dna . this pcr product was used as a template for the msp reaction . all pcrs were performed with controls for unmethylated dna ( dna from normal lymfocytes ), methylated dna ( normal lymphocyte dna treated in vitro with sssi methyltransferase ( new england biolabs )), and a control without dna . ten μl of each msp reaction were directly loaded onto 2 % agarose visualized under uv illumination . primer sequences and pcr conditions , are specified in table 19 . genomic dna was isolated using the wizard genomic dna purification kit ( promega , leiden , the netherlands ). bisulfite modification of genomic dna was carried out using the ez dna methylation kit ( zymo research ). pcr products were subcloned using the ta cloning kit ( invitrogen , breda , the netherlands ) and single colonies were selected and sequenced . primer sequences and pcr conditions are specified in table 20 . total rna isolation was isolated by use of the rneasy mini kit ( qiagen ) cdna synthesis using the iscript cdna synthesis kit ( bio - rad ). quantitative real - time reverse transcription - pcr was done using sybr green pcr master mix ( applied biosystems , nieuwekerk a / d ijssel , the netherlands ). primers and pcr conditions are specified in table 21 . expression of the ndrg4 gene was determined by real - time reverse - transcription pcr ( rt - pcr ). the ndrg4 gene was found to be well expressed in normal colon cell lines , whereas it was not expressed in the colon cancer cell lines . since this on its own did not indicate that the silencing is epigenetic , the rko and hct116 cell lines were treated with the reagent dac ( 5 ′ dazacytidine ) and tsa . relative expression of ndrg4 after treatment with dac and tsa was compared to untreated cell lines . cyclophilin was used as a reference gene for expression normalisation . fig2 shows that treatment resulted in a reactivation of ndrg4 expression , providing evidence for epigenetic silencing of the gene in colon cancer cells . having observed that the silencing of ndrg4 expression was reversed after treatment with dac and tsa , the association between the transcriptional inactivation and the putative epigenetic aberration was further investigated . the ndrg cpg island methylation status was established by pcr analysis of bisulfite - modified genomic dna , which induces chemical conversion of unmethylated , but not methylated , cytosine to uracil , using the procedures as specified . table v shows that ndrg4 cpg island methylation analysed by msp was observed in the cancer cell lines ls174t , hct116 , ht29 , rko , caco2 and sw48 , whereas it was absent in the unmethylated cell line sw480 . similarly , ndrg2 cpg island methylation analysed by msp with different primer sets ( a to d ) was observed in most of the cancer cell lines . in all cancer cell lines ls174t , hct116 , ht29 , rko , caco2 and sw48 , ndrg2 cpg island methylation was observed with primer sets b of table 19 . following the demonstration of the epigenetic loss of function of ndrg4 in cancer - cell lines , we assessed the prevalence of ndrg4 cpg island promoter hypermethylation in cancer patients . as expected , ndrg4 cpg island promoter hypermethylation was absent in normal mucosa from patients without cancer . as indicated in table 23 , ndrg4 cpg island promoter hypermethylation was observed with different frequency among each class of neoplasm . ndrg4 was methylated in 76 % of the 88 investigated carcinoma tissues and in 57 % of 57 adenomas with concurrent colorectal cancer . in adenomas from patients that did not have colorectal cancer ( low - grade dysplastic non - progressed adenomas ), ndrg4 methylation was significantly lower ( 14 %), indicating the prognostic value of this ndrg4 methylation towards colorectal cancer development samples from resected tumors and histologically normal resection were tested for hypermethylation of 13 genes . representative results are shown in fig4 . the highest methylation was obtained for sfrp1 , sfrp2 , ndrg4 , gata4 and gata5 . all showed a sensitivity & gt ; 40 % for 100 % specificity . we tested the ability of the ndrg4 methylation marker to improve the sensitivity of cancer detection with a number of methylation markers selected on their ability to detect colorectal cancer . the other genes were selected from the group consisting of sfrp1 , sfrp2 , gata - 4 , gata - 5 , chfr , apc ( 2 ), mgmt , p16 , vimentin , p14 , rassf1a and rab32 . in a first instance , the ability of ndrg4 to complement sfrp1 was analysed . 30 % of colon carcinoma samples ( n = 18 ) for which sfrp1 failed to be hypermethylated , showed hypermethylation for ndrg4 ( n = 6 ). similarly , carcinoma samples which failed to be detected by way of sfrp2 , gata4 , or gata5 methylation analysis , showed hypermethylation for ndrg4 . in fact , the combination of ndrg4 with any of the methylation markers from fig4 improved diagnosis of cancer ndrg - 4 methylation was assessed on other cancer types showing hypermethylation for certain genes . these cancer types comprised melanoma , clear cell kidney cancer , ovarian carcinoma , prostate cancer , breast cancer and gastric cancer . the results were as follows : melanoma : 0 out of 8 samples were methylated for ndrg4 clear cell kidney cancer : only 1 out of 10 samples was methylated for ndrg4 ovarium carcinoma : 0 out of 20 samples were methylated for ndrg4 prostate cancer : 0 out of 10 samples were methylated for ndrg4 breast cancer : 0 / 7 lobular cancers and 0 / 9 ductal cancers were methylated for ndrg4 in contrast to these results , in all of the 6 gastric cancers tested methylation for ndrg4 was observed . this seems to indicate that ndrg4 is a type - specific cancer methylation marker and is preferably used to detect colon cancer and / or gastric cancer . akey , d . t ., akey , j . m ., zhang , k ., jin , l ., 2002 . genomics , 80 : 376 - 384 . angela di vinci , ilaria gelvi , barbara banelli , ida casciano , giorgio allemanni and massimo romani . laboratory investigation ( 2006 ) 1 - 7 barringer k j , orgel l , wahl g , gingeras t r . gene . 1990 apr . 30 ; 89 ( 1 ): 117 - 22 boggs b . a ., cheung p , heard e , spector d l , chinault a c , allis c d . nat . genet . 2002 , 30 : 73 - 76 . cottrell , s ., distler , j ., goodman , n ., mooney , s ., kluth , a ., olek , a ., schwope , i ., tetzner , r ., ziebarth , h ., berlin , k . nucleic acid res . 2004 , 32 : e10 . deng y , yao l , chau l , ng s s , peng y , liu x , au w s , wang j , li f , ji s , han h , nie x , li q , kung h f , leung s y , lin m c . int j cancer . 2003 , 106 ( 6 ): 984 . eads , c . a ., danenberg , k . d ., kawakami , k , saltz , l . b ., blake c ., shibata , d ; danenberg , p . v . and laird p . w . nucleic acid res . 2000 , 28 : e32 fahy e , kwoh d y , gingeras t r . pcr methods appl . 1991 aug . ; 1 ( 1 ): 25 - 33 furuichi y , wataya y , hayatsu h , ukita t . biochem biophys res commun . 1970 dec 9 ; 41 ( 5 ): 1185 - 91 guan r j , ford h l , fu y , li y , shaw l m , pardee a b . cancer res . 2000 , 60 ( 3 ): 749 - 55 . herman j g , graff j r , myohanen s , nelkin b d , baylin s b . proc . natl . acad . sci . usa . 1996 : 93 ( 18 ): 9821 - 9826 hu x l , liu x p , lin s x , deng y c , liu n , li x , yao l b . world j gastroenterol . 2004 , 10 ( 23 ): 3518 - 21 jones p a and baylin s b nat . rev . genet . 2002 , 3 : 415 - 428 . jørgensen , h f ., adie , k ., chaubert , p . and bird a . nucleic acids research , 2006 , vol . 34 , no . 13 e96 kondo y , shen l , issa j p mol . cell . biol . 2003 , 23 : 206 - 215 . lund a h , and van lohuizen m . genes dev . 2004 , 18 : 2315 - 2335 . lusis e a , watson m a , chicoine m r , lyman m , roerig p , reifenberger g , gutmann d h , perry a . cancer res . 2005 , 65 ( 16 ): 7121 - 6 . mitchelmore c , buchmann - moller s , rask l , west m j , troncoso j c , jensen n a . neurobiol dis . 2004 , 16 ( 1 ): 48 - 58 nishimoto s , tawara j , toyoda h , kitamura k , komurasaki t . eur j biochem . 2003 jun ; 270 ( 11 ): 2521 - 31 qu x , zhai y , wei h , zhang c , xing g , yu y , he f . mol cell biochem . 2002 , 229 ( 1 - 2 ): 35 - 44 . rand k ., qu , w ., ho , t ., clark , s . j ., molloy , p . methods . 2002 , 27 : 114 - 120 . sasaki , m ., anast , j ., bassett , w ., kawakami , t ., sakuragi , n ., and dahiya , r . biochem . biophys . res . commun . 2003 , 209 : 305 - 309 . shiio y , eisenman r n proc . natl . acad . sci . usa . 2003 , 100 : 7357 - 7362 . zhao w , tang r , huang y , wang w , zhou z , gu s , dai j , ying k , xie y , mao y . biochim biophys acta . 2001 , 1519 ( 1 - 2 ): 134 - 138 ; a standardized multicenter screening trial ( the netherlands ) was initiated in 2006 . in this trial , non symptomatic subjects aged 50 or above are screened with colonoscopy , fobt and real - time msp using dna from stool and blood . in addition , prospectively collected stool samples from multiple centers ( germany and the netherlands ) were used . in these trials , symptomatic patients , attending a gastroenterology clinic and ultimately diagnosed with crc , provided a stool sample for use in real - time msp . from the ongoing trials 147 stool samples were available for the present study . 3 main categories of stool samples were used : 67 samples with no suspicious findings , 58 adenomas and 22 samples from patients covering all stages of crc , with 90 % representing early stage disease . after defecation in a special bucket , patients added 250 ml of stool homogenization buffer ( amresco , solon , ohio , usa ) to the sample . samples were shipped to the laboratory and further processed within 72 hours after defecation . stool homogenization buffer was added to a ratio 1 : 7 , and the samples were homogenized and aliquoted in portions of 32 ml . single aliquots ( 32 ml containing the equivalent of 4 g of stool ) were centrifuged for 5 minutes at 2540 rcf at 20 ° c . the supernatant was retained and centrifuged a second time ( 10 minutes at 16500 rcf at 4 ° c .). 22 ml of the supernatant obtained following the second centrifugation step was incubated with 5 μl rnase a for 60 minutes at 37 ° c . total dna was then sodiumacetate ( ph 5 . 2 )— isopropanol precipitated and washed with 70 % ethanol . the dna was resuspended in 4 ml 1 × te ( ph 7 . 4 ). 400 μl 10 × buffer ( 240 mm edta ( ph = 8 . 0 ), 750 mm nac ), 400 μl 10 % sds , and 20 μl proteinase k ( 20 mg / ml ) was added and the samples were incubated at 48 ° c . overnight at constant shaking ( 225 rpm ). after centrifugation ( 3000 rcf for 30 seconds at room temperature ), 5 ml of phenol : chloroform : isoamylalcohol ( 25 : 24 : 1 , v / v ; invitrogen ) was added and incubated for 10 minutes at room temperature shaking at 225 rpm and centrifuged for 5 minutes at 3000 rcf . the aqueous layer was transferred to a new tube containing 5 ml of phenol : chloroform : isoamylalcohol . again , the samples were incubated for 10 minutes at room temperature shaking at 225 rpm and centrifuged for 5 minutes at 3000 rcf at room temperature . the aqueous layer was transferred to a new tube and dna was precipitated by adding 500 μl 7 . 5 m ammonium acetate , 5 μl glycogen and 10 ml of cold 100 % ethanol (− 20 ° c . ), further incubated at − 20 ° c . for at least 1 hour and centrifuged at 15000 rcf for 30 minutes at 4 ° c . pellets were washed with 3 . 5 ml freshly prepared 70 % ethanol and air dried . pellets were finally resuspended in 2 ml of lote ph 8 . 0 and stored at − 80 ° c ., until further processing . average yield of dna was 462 μg ( ranging from 46 - 2127 μg ; sd 420 ) an upscaled dna modification step was applied to 32 μg of the obtained dna . 16 aliquots of 2 μg of dna were subjected to bisulfite modification in 96 - wells format on a pipetting robot ( tecan ), using the ez - 96dna methylation kit ( zymo research ), according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s protocol . basically , aliquots of 45 μl were mixed with 5 μl of m - dilution buffer and incubated at 37 ° c . for 15 minutes shaking at 1100 rpm . then 100 μl of the diluted ct conversion reagent was added and samples were incubated at 70 ° c . for 3 hours , shaking at 1100 rpm in the dark . after conversion , the samples were desalted by incubation on ice for 10 minutes and addition of 400 μl of m - binding buffer . the samples were loaded on a zymo - spin i column in a collection tube and after centrifugation washed with 200 μl of m - wash buffer . 200 μl of m - desulphonation buffer was put onto the column and incubated at room temperature for 15 minutes . after centrifugation of the columns , they were washed twice with 200 μl of m - wash buffer . finally , the dna was washed from the column in 50 μl tris - hcl 1 mm ph 8 . 0 and stored at − 80 ° c ., until further processing . bisulfite treated dna is concentrated using the zymo clean and concentrator kit ( zymo research ). to each aliquot of dna 100 μl of dna binding buffer was added . the equivalent of ˜ 6 μg of dna ( quantified before bisulfite treatment ) was transferred to a zymo - spin ™ column in a collection tube . ( 16 wells with bisulfite treated dna per sample are divided over 5 zymo - spin ™ columns .) the tubes were centrifuged at ≧ 10 , 000 rpm for 30 seconds and washed twice with 200 μl of wash buffer . the dna was eluted of the column by adding 6 μl of 1 mm tris - hcl , ph = 8 . 0 , incubated for 1 minute and centrifugation at 10 , 000 rpm for 30 seconds . the eluates of columns with the same sample were pooled . the resulting chemical treated dna was used as template for real - time msp . real - time msp was applied on a 7900ht fast real - time pcr system ( applied biosystems ). 2 . 4 μl of the modified dna ( equivalent to 2 . 5 μg unconverted dna ) was added to a pcr mix ( total volume 12 μl ) containing buffer ( 16 . 6 mm ( nh4 ) 2so4 , 67 mm tris ( ph 8 . 8 ), 6 . 7 mm mgcl2 , 10 mm β - mercaptoethanol ), dntps ( 5 mm ), forward primer ( 6 ng ), reverse primer ( 18 ng ), molecular beacon ( 0 . 16 μm ), bsa ( 0 . 1 μg ), and jumpstart dna taq polymerase ( 0 . 4 units ; sigma aldrich ). the primer sequences and molecular beacon sequences used for each of the genes are summarized in table 1 . cycle program used was as follows : 5 minutes 95 ° c ., followed by 45 cycles of 30 seconds 95 ° c ., 30 seconds 57 ° c . ( 51 ° c . for apc ), and 30 seconds 72 ° c ., followed by 5 minutes 72 ° c . a standard curve ( 2 × 106 − 20 copies ) was included to determine copy numbers of unknown samples by interpolation of their ct values to the standard curve . assay validity rate in tissue and stool : 230 ffpe and 147 stool samples were processed using real - time msp . the real - time msp assays produced valid results in 99 % of the ffpe and stool samples . marker selection in colon tissue : based on re - expression , 224 different gene assays representing 145 gene promotors were tested on the base5 methylation profiling platform ( data not shown , see reference 1 for details ). the 37 most differentially methylated gene sequences assessing 29 gene promoters were validated on retrospectively collected tumors from 65 colorectal cancer patients ( all stages ) and 74 distant resection ends ( histopathologically normal ) using real - time msp . several markers reliably detected crc in those tissue samples ( data not shown ). the results were confirmed on an independent test set containing 39 tissue controls ( non - cancerous ), 34 carcinomas and 16 adenomas . several combinations of the tested markers reliably detected crc with high specificity and sensitivity . the ten best performing markers gata5 , gata4 , sfrp1 , sfrp2 , apc , mgmt , ndrg4 , osmr , jph3 and adam23 were validated with primer sets and beacon probes as specified in table 24 . in addition to the colon test genes , the independent reference gene β - actin ( act ) was also measured . the ratios between the colon test genes and act were calculated , and are the test result of the assay . the samples were classified as methylated , non - methylated , or invalid based on the decision tree shown in fig5 . the individual performance of the ten markers is shown in table 25 . dependent on the cutoff applied , different sensitivities were obtained for the individual markers . for 100 % specificity of the marker , sensitivities (%) ranged from 56 to 66 for gata5 , 78 to 82 gata4 , 84 to 92 for sfrp1 , 72 to 84 for sfrp2 , 40 to 46 for apc , 44 for mgmt , 64 to 66 for ndrg4 , 88 for osmr , 82 for jph3 and 50 for adam23 . table 25 individual performance of markers on adenoma and carcinoma colorectal tissue samples cases ( adenoma + cut off sensitivity specificity gene * carcinoma ) controls ratio ** (%) (%) gata5 50 39 12 ( 5 ) 56 ( 66 ) 100 gata4 50 39 17 ( 12 ) 78 ( 82 ) 100 sfrp1 50 39 47 ( 25 ) 84 ( 92 ) 100 sfrp2 50 39 28 ( 9 ) 72 ( 84 ) 100 apc 50 39 16 ( 5 ) 40 ( 46 ) 100 mgmt 50 39 18 44 100 ndrg4 50 39 7 ( 1 ) 64 ( 66 ) 100 osmr ( 3 ) 50 39 47 88 100 jph3 50 39 55 ( 75 ) 82 ( 82 ) 95 ( 100 ) adam23 50 39 2 50 100 *( 3 ) reflects the primer combinations used for assessing methylation of the osmr gene ** in case two sets of cut off ratio were assessed , the second set and its corresponding sensitivity is indicated between ( ). the different markers were tested on their complementarity . several combinations of the tested markers reliably detected crc with high specificity and sensitivity . results are summarized in table 26 . for 100 % specificity , sensitivities (%) ranged between 90 to 98 for combinations of two markers . a sensitivity of 100 % was obtained for the 3 - marker combinations sfrp1 + sfrp2 + apc and sfrp2 + osmr + apc . important for early cancer detection is the performance of the markers on early stage cancers . therefore , the 50 cancer cases from the test set were further divided into 2 diagnosis groups : carcinomas and adenomas . results are summarized in table 27 and 28 . sensitivity for carcinomas ranged from 35 % to 88 % for detection of colorectal cancer whereas sensitivity for adenomas ranged from 31 % to 88 % both with a corresponding specificity of 100 %. these results indicate that the selected set of genes are highly specific for colorectal cancer and include some promising early stage detection markers . table 28 performance of the markers on adenoma samples cut off gene * adenoma controls ratio sensitivity specificity gata5 16 39 12 63 100 gata4 16 39 17 88 100 sfrp1 16 39 47 88 100 sfrp2 16 39 28 81 100 apc 16 39 16 50 100 mgmt 16 39 18 63 100 ndrg4 16 39 7 69 100 osmr ( 3 ) 16 39 47 88 100 jph3 16 39 55 81 100 adam23 16 39 2 31 100 *( 3 ) reflects the primer combinations used for assessing methylation of the osmr gene nine of the best performing methylation markers in tissue ( gata4 , gata5 , sfrp1 , sfrp2 , ndrg4 , apc , adam23 , osmr3 , and jph3 ) were chosen to be evaluated in fecal samples . β - actin copy numbers were also quantified as a control for sample quality and dna yield . methylated copies of these genes were quantified in all available stool samples by real - time msp on a 7900ht fast real - time pcr system ( applied biosystems ). the individual performance of the 9 genes ( actin , sfrp2 , gata5 , gata4 , apc , sfrp1 , ndrg4 , osmr3 and adam23 ) in fecal samples from adenoma &# 39 ; s and colorectal cancers is shown in table 29 . a specificity of 100 % was obtained for most of the genes , except for sfrp2 . the best performing genes in fecal samples from patients with crc corresponded to gata4 with 73 % sensitivity , sfrp1 with 67 % sensitivity , osmr3 with 67 % sensitivity , and ndrg4 with 60 % sensitivity , all with a corresponding specificity of 100 %. four candidate methylation markers were found to result in the best sensitivity and specificity in stool samples : gata4 , sfrp2 , ndrg4 , osmr . β - actin copy numbers were also quantified as a control for sample quality and dna yield . the performance of combination panels of these 4 methylation markers was investigated . methylated copies of these genes were quantified in all available stool samples by real - time msp on a 7900ht fast real - time pcr system ( applied biosystems ). table 30 shows the results and lists the cut - off ( copies ) applied . for instance for the most sensitive marker combination panel sfrp2 + gata4 + ndrg4 + osmr , cutoff values of the individual markers were sfrp2 = 2 ; gata4 = 4 ; ndrg4 = 0 . 1 and osmr = 10 . this combination panel had 95 % specificity , 87 % sensitivity for crc , and 46 % sensitivity for adenomas . the preferred 2 - marker combination ndrg4 + gata4 had a 100 % specificity , a sensitivity of 73 % for crc , and a 33 % sensitivity for adenomas . based on re - expression , 224 different gene assays representing 145 gene promotors were tested on the base5 methylation profiling platform ( data not shown , see reference 2 for details ). the 37 most differentially methylated gene sequences assessing 29 gene promoters were validated on retrospectively collected tumors from 65 colorectal cancer patients ( all stages ) and 74 distant resection ends ( histopathologically normal ) using real - time msp . several markers reliably detected crc in those tissue samples ( data not shown ). the results were confirmed on an independent test set containing 59 samples from patients with cancer other than crc ( 20 breast , 21 lung and 22 bladder cancer samples covering stages i - iii ), 39 non - cancerous controls , 34 carcinomas and 16 adenomas . after testing the non - crc tissue samples , we had 59 results because 4 were invalid . the individual performance of the 9 best performing tissue markers is shown in fig2 , when the analytical cut - off was set to give 100 % specificity ( based on the 39 non - cancerous controls ). the most tissue specific markers include : ndrg4 , osmr , sfrp1 , adam23 , gata5 and mgmt . ahlquist d a , skoletsky j e , boynton k a , harrington j j , mahoney d w , pierceall w e , shuber a p . colorectal cancer screening by detection of altered human dna in stool : feasibility of a multi - target assay panel . baylin , s . b ., belinsky , s . a . & amp ; herman , j . g . aberrant methylation of gene promoters in cancer — concepts , misconcepts , and promise . belshaw n j , elliott g o , williams e a , et al . use of dna from human stools to detect aberrant cpg island methylation of genes implicated in colorectal cancer . boynton k a , summerhayes i c , ahlquist d a , shuber a p . dna integrity as a potential marker for stool - based detection of colorectal cancer . w . d . chen , z . j . han , j . skoletsky , j . olson , j . sah , l . myeroff , p . platzer , s . lu , d . dawson , j . willis , t . p . pretlow , j . lutterbaugh , l . kasturi , j . k . willson , j . s . rao , a . shuber and s . d . markowitz . detection in fecal dna of colon cancer specific methylation of the nonexpressed vimentin gene . j natl cancer inst 97 ( 2005 ), 1124 - 1132 . dong s m , traverso g , johnson c , geng l , favis r , boynton k , hibi k , goodman s n , d &# 39 ; allessio m , paty p , hamilton s r , sidransky d , barany f , levin b , shuber a , kinzler k w , vogelstein b , jen j . detecting colorectal cancer in stool with the use of multiple genetic targets . j natl cancer inst . 2001 jun . 6 ; 93 ( 11 ): 858 - 65 p . a . jones and s . b . baylin . the fundamental role of epigenetic events in cancer . nat rev genet 3 ( 2002 ), 415 - 428 . p . w . laird . early detection : the power and the promise of dna methylation markers . nat rev cancer 3 ( 2003 ), 253 - 266 . k . lenhard , g . t . bommer , s . asutay , r . schauer , t . brabletz , b . goke , r . lamerz and f . t . kolligs . analysis of promoter methylation in stool : a novel method for the detection of colorectal cancer , clin gastroenterol hepatol 3 ( 2005 ), 142 - 149 . leung w k , to k f , man e p , chan m w , bai a h , hui a j , chan f k , lee j f , sung j j . detection of epigenetic changes in fecal dna as a molecular screening test for colorectal cancer : a feasibility study . clin chem . 2004 november ; 50 ( 11 ): 2179 - 82 . h . m . muller , m . oberwalder , h . fiegl , m . morandell , g . goebel , m . zitt , m . muhlthaler , d . ofner , r . margreiter and m . widschwendter . methylation changes in faecal dna : a marker for colorectal cancer screening ? lancet 363 ( 2004 ), 1283 - 1285 . olson j , whitney d h , durkee k , shuber a p . dna stabilization is critical for maximizing performance of fecal dna - based colorectal cancer tests diagn mol pathol . 2005 september ; 14 ( 3 ): 183 - 91 . z . petko , m . ghiassi , a . shuber , j . gorham , w . smalley , m . k . washington , s . schultenover , s . gautam , s . d . markowitz and w . m . grady . aberrantly methylated cdkn2a , mgmt , and mlh1 in colon polyps and in fecal dna from patients with colorectal polyps . sidransky , d . nucleic acid - based methods for the detection of cancer . science 278 , 1054 - 1058 ( 1997 ) straub , j . et al ., ab - 104 - aacrmd ( 2007 ), poster presented september 2007 at the aacr meeting “ molecular diagnostics in cancer therapeutic development : maximizing opportunities for personalized treatment . whitney d , skoletsky j , moore k , boynton k , kann l , brand r . syngal s , lawson m , shuber a . enhanced retrieval of dna from human fecal samples results in improved performance of colorectal cancer screening test . j mol diagn . 2004 november ; 6 ( 4 ): 386 - 95 zou et al ., clin chem . 2007 september ; 53 ( 9 ): 1646 - 51 . a novel method to capture methylated human dna from stool : implications for colorectal cancer screening . plasma samples were collected from multiple centers in germany , the netherlands and belgium . 10 ml of blood was obtained per individual using edta vacutainer ™ tubes . individuals with no suspicious findings , adenomas or carcinomas based on colonoscopy were enrolled in the present study . within 4 hrs from the blood drawing , the plasma fraction was separated from the cell fraction by centrifugation at 1500 g for 15 min ( 4 ° c .). the plasma was transferred to new tubes and once again centrifuged ( 1500 g , 15 min , 4 ° c . ), after which the supernatant was transferred to new tubes and stored at − 80 ° c . until further use . samples were shipped on dry ice . plasma samples from patients with stages i - iv of colorectal cancers and different controls belonging to the following groups were enrolled in this study . tables 32 and 33 gives an overview of the collected samples sets . colorectal cancer group : patients with pathologically confirmed colorectal cancer with stage i to iv ( according to the uicc stage grouping ) adenomas non - cancer controls : patients without cancerous disease cancer controls : patients with carcinomas other than colorectal cancer table 33 plasma training set 2 diagnosis sample number of group volume samples notes colorectal 1 . 3 to 4 . 3 ml 78 stagei - iv cancers of plasma grade 1 - 3 ( corresponding ( 76 % stage i - iii ) adenomas to 0 . 16 to 49 non - cancer 0 . 52 plasma 64 symptomatic controls equivalent of patients with dna per pcr ) non - acute conditions cancer 4 to 6 ml of 25 predominantly controls plasma ovarian and ( corresponding prostate to 0 . 48 to cancers 0 . 72 plasma equivalent of dna per pcr ) dna isolation from plasma samples ( 1 . 2 to 6 ml ) was performed using an upscaled phenol - chloroform dna isolation method using the 15 ml of heavy phase lock gel tubes ( plg tubes ) ( eppendorf , cat # 0032 005 . 152 ) or alternatively the chargeswitch ® gdna 1 ml serum kit from invitrogen ( cat # cs11040 ). plasma samples were thawed and 1 / 10 volume of 10 × buffer ( 240 mm edta ( ph = 8 . 0 ), 750 mm nacl ), 1 / 10 volume of 10 % sds and 5 μl of proteinase k ( 20 mg / ml stock solution ) per 1 ml of sample ( e . g . 15 μl for 3 ml of sample ) was added to each plasma sample . this mixture was incubated overnight at 48 ° c . at constant shaking ( 200 rpm ). subsequently the plg tube was centrifuged at 2500 rcf for 3 min , sample mixture and approximately the same volume of phenol / chloroform ( invitrogen , cat # 15593049 ) were added to it . this solution was briefly vortexed , mixed for 10 min using a tube rocker at room temperature and centrifuged for 5 min at 2500 rcf . in case the retrieved sample volume was ≦ 4 ml , an equal volume of phenol / chloroform was added . the upper aqueous layer was phenol / chloroform - treated for a second time . dna was precipitated from the the upper aqueous layer by adding 5 μl glycogen , 1 / 10 volume of 7 . 5 m ammonium acetate and 2 - 2 . 5 volumes of cold (− 20 ° c .) 100 % ethanol . tubes were gently inverted and incubated at − 20 ° c . for at least 1 h , followed by a centrifugation step at 17000 rcf for 30 min ( 4 ° c .). ethanol was carefully removed by pipetting . pellets were washed with 2 ml freshly prepared 70 % ethanol , vortexed gently and submitted to a centrifugation step at 17000 rcf for 15 min at 4 ° c . after careful removal of the remaining ethanol , pellets were air dried and resuspended in 45 μl of lote ph 8 . 0 . the isolated dna is stored at − 80 ° c . until further processing . this method allowed an average dna recovery of ≅ 120 ng per ml of plasma . plasma samples are thawed and dna is isolated using the chargeswitch ® gdna 1 ml serum kit according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions with the exception that the procedure is upscaled for larger sample volumes using the magnabot ® large volume magnetic separation device from promega ( cat # v3471 ). results are presented in table 41 . the complete content of dna isolated in above procedure was subjected to sodium bisulfite treatment ( bt ) using the ez - 96 dna methylation kit from zymo research ( cat # d5003 ) performed on a pipetting robot ( tecan freedom evoii , roma , liha , mca , te - vacs ). briefly , 45 μl of plasma dna sample was mixed with 5 μl of m - dilution buffer ( provided in kit ) and incubated at 37 ° c . for 15 min shaking at 1100 rpm . this mixture was further incubated with 100 μl of diluted ct conversion reagent ( provided in kit ) shaking at 70 ° c . for 3 hours ( protected from light ). subsequently the modified dna was desalted and desulfonated according to manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions and eluted in either 40 μl or 20 μl of tris - hcl 1 mm ph 8 . 0 , depending on the applied concentration procedure . the eluted material was stored at − 80 ° c . until further processing . real - time msp was performed on a 7900ht fast real - time pcr cycler from applied biosystems . 2 . 4 μl of the modified dna was added to a pcr mix ( total volume 12 μl ) containing home - made buffer solution ( final concentrations are summarized : 16 . 6 mm ( nh 4 ) 2 so 4 , 67 mm tris ( ph 8 . 8 ), 6 . 7 mm mgcl 2 , 10 mm β - mercaptoethanol ), dntps ( 5 mm ; amersham biosciences cat # 27 - 2035 - 02 ), methylation specific forward primer ( 6 ng ), methylation specific reverse primer ( 18 ng ), molecular beacon ( 0 . 16 μm ) and jumpstart dna taq polymerase ( 0 . 4 units ; sigma cat # d9307 ). a standard curve was included ( 9 . 6 × 10 5 − 9 . 6 copies ) to determine copy numbers of unknown samples by interpolation of their ct values to the standard curve . table 35 summary of samples evaluated by real - time msp sample sample sets sample types numbers valid tests [%] tissue cancer 65 65 / 65 [ 100 ] training controls 76 74 / 76 [ 97 ] set total 141 139 / 141 [ 99 ] tissue test crc 34 34 / 34 [ 100 ] set controls 39 39 / 39 [ 100 ] other cancers 63 59 / 63 [ 94 ] adenomas 16 16 / 16 [ 100 ] total 152 148 / 152 [ 97 ] tissue sets crc 99 99 / 99 [ 100 ] combined controls 115 113 / 115 [ 98 ] other cancers 63 59 / 63 [ 94 ] adenomas 16 16 / 16 [ 100 ] total 293 287 / 293 [ 98 ] plasma cancer 42 42 / 42 [ 100 ] training controls 34 34 / 34 [ 100 ] set ( 1 ) other cancers 25 25 / 25 [ 100 ] total 101 101 / 101 [ 100 ] plasma cancer 78 78 / 78 [ 100 ] training adenoma 49 49 / 49 [ 100 ] set ( 2 ), controls 64 64 / 64 [ 100 ] increased other cancers 25 25 / 25 [ 100 ] plasma total 216 216 / 216 [ 100 ] equivalent of dna per real - time msp assay plasma sets cancer 120 120 / 120 [ 100 ] combined adenoma 49 49 / 49 [ 100 ] controls 98 98 / 98 [ 100 ] other cancers 50 50 / 50 [ 100 ] total 317 317 / 317 [ 100 ] using re - expression profiles of colon cancerous cell lines , candidate genes were identified and the most promising markers ( 224 different gene assays representing 145 gene promoters ) were tested on tissue using the base5 methylation profiling platform ( data not shown , see straub , j . et al for details ). promoter sequences were linked with gene expression to identify epigenetically silenced genes . an established pharmacologic unmasking strategy ( 5 - aza - 2 ′- deoxycytidine ( dac ) and trichostatin a ( tsa )) for re - expression analysis of epigenetically targeted genes was combined with proprietary advanced bioinformatics tools to identify genes prone to promoter methylation . marker candidates identified by re - expression were screened using 37 real - time methylation specific pcr ( real - time msp ) assays . these assays were used to assess the methylation status of 29 gene promoters in 293 formalin - fixed paraffin - embedded ( ffpe ) tissue samples collected from various clinics . samples included 99 carcinomas of various stages , 16 adenomas , 63 samples from patients with cancer other than crc ( 20 breast [ stages i - iii ], 22 bladder [ stages i - iii ], 21 lung [ stages i and ii ]), 39 samples from patients with no evidence of cancer and 76 distant resection ends ( histopathologically normal ) from crc patients . these samples were divided into training and independent test sets , and used to select the gene methylation assays best able to discriminate between cancerous and non - cancerous samples . the training set included retrospectively collected tumors from 65 colorectal cancer patients ( all stages ) and 74 distant resection ends . using the 10 best performing genes the results were confirmed on an independent test set containing 59 samples from patients with cancer other than crc , 39 non - cancerous controls and 50 cancer cases ( 34 carcinomas and 16 adenomas ). the individual performance of the 10 best performing tissue markers osmr , sfrp1 , gata4 , sfrp2 , ndrg4 , adam23 , gata5 , mgmt , apc and jph3 is shown in fig7 , when the analytical cut - off was set to give 100 % specificity , except for jph3 where a specificity of 95 % was obtained ( based on the 39 non - cancerous controls ). corresponding primer and beacon sequences are summarized in table 3 ( above ). in addition to the colon test genes , the independent reference gene β - actin ( act ) was also measured . the ratios between the colon test genes and act were calculated , and are the test result of the assay . the samples were classified as methylated , non - methylated , or invalid based on the decision tree shown in fig5 . the different markers were tested on their complementarity . several marker combinations reliably detected crc with high specificity and sensitivity . results of the best 2 marker combinations are summarized in table 36 . for 100 % specificity , sensitivities ranged between 94 to 100 %. eight of the best performing markers in tissue were assessed ( osmr , sfrp1 , ndrg4 , gata5 , adam23 , jph3 , sfrp2 and apc ) on 101 available plasma samples from multiple centers ( plasma training set 1 : table 32 ). these plasma samples included 34 samples with no suspicious findings , 25 samples from patients with cancers other than colon cancer and 42 samples from patients covering all stages of crc , with 81 % representing stages i - iii of disease . dna was isolated following the upscaled phenol - chloroform procedure ; subsequently the whole dna sample was modified as described above . the plasma training set 1 was eluted in 40 μl of bt elution volume of which 2 . 4 μl was subjected to real - time msp , the 2 . 4 μl of eluted dna corresponds to an equivalent of 0 . 07 to 0 . 36 ml of original plasma sample which went into the isolation procedure (= 0 . 07 to 0 . 36 plasma equivalent of dna per pcr ). the individual performance (% sensitivity ) of the 8 gene assays in plasma samples is shown in fig . 8 , sensitivity values ranging from 14 to 33 %. corresponding specificity values are displayed in table 37 . obtained specificity values ranged from 97 to 100 %. five of the best performing markers in training set 1 were further studied with an additional , independent sample set prospectively collected from multiple centers ( plasma training set 2 : table 33 ). reducing the number of gene assays from 8 to 5 resulted in fewer assays per sample and a greater aliquot of plasma equivalent of dna was added per pcr reaction . the modified dna from sample set 2 was more concentrated by eluting in 20 μl instead of 40 μl of bt elution volume . 2 . 4 μl eluted dna from sample set 2 was further processed through real - time msp , this corresponds to 0 . 16 to 0 . 72 ml plasma equivalent of dna per pcr depending on the plasma volume prior to dna isolation . the plasma samples of training set 2 included 64 samples with no suspicious findings , 49 adenomas , 25 samples from patients with cancers other than colon cancer and 78 samples from patients covering all stages of crc , with 76 % representing stages i - iii of disease . the individual performance (% sensitivity ) of the 5 gene assays is shown in fig8 with corresponding specificity values displayed in table 37 . specificity values ranged from 96 to 99 %, with sensitivity ranging from 23 to 47 %. four candidate methylation markers were found to result in the best sensitivity and specificity in plasma samples : osmr , ndrg4 , gata5 and adam23 ; performance of this plasma panel is shown in table 38 . performance characteristics ( stages i - iii crc ) of this panel of 4 methylation genes demonstrated 73 % sensitivity and 92 % specificity when optimized for sensitivity , whereas 64 % sensitivity and 98 % specificity was obtained when optimizing for specificity . sensitivity can be further improved ( from 64 % to 68 %) when samples with a plasma volume less than 2 ml prior to dna isolation are excluded from analysis . results are presented in table 39 . table 39 performance of a plasma marker panel using real - time msp using at least 2 ml of plasma prior to dna isolation specificity % sensitivity % (# detected / (# detected /# total ) # total ) sample sets sample groups [ 95 % ci ] [ 95 % ci ] plasma panel ( optimized for sensitivity ) osmr , ndrg4 , gata5 and adam23 plasma stages i - iii crc 73 ( 41 / 56 ) training set 2 all stages crc 74 ( 54 / 73 ) [ 64 - 84 ] ( increased adenomas 12 ( 6 / 49 ) plasma all controls 92 ( 7 / 89 ) [ 86 - 98 ] equivalent of dna per real - time msp assay ) plasma panel ( optimized for specificity ) osmr , ndrg4 , gata5 and adam23 plasma stages i - iii crc 68 ( 38 / 56 ) training set 2 all stages crc 67 ( 49 / 73 ) [ 56 - 76 ] ( increased adenomas 6 ( 3 / 49 ) plasma all controls 98 ( 2 / 89 ) equivalent of [ 95 - 100 ] dna per real - time msp assay ) plasma dna ( collected after double centrifugation step ) from colorectal cancer patients was isolated according to the phenol / chloroform procedure and quantified using the picogreen dsdna quantitation kit from molecular probes . the average plasma dna recovery yield was 117 ng / ml of plasma , with a range of 41 to 384 ng / ml ( data obtained from 25 patients ). this experiment was carried out to show the isolation of dna from plasma by using the method of this invention . plasma volumes ranging from 2 . 5 to 6 ml were processed according to the above discussed upscaled phenol / chloroform and chargeswitch ® isolation procedure . plasma derived from ovarian , prostate and colon blood samples were investigated . the objective was to isolate dna ( according to both methods ) and further process the samples in parallel through bisuphite treatment and β - actin real - time msp to address the sample quality and dna yield . the corresponding β - actin copies for both isolation procedures are summarized in table 16 . corrected information was received from the clinics about plasma training set 2 . for plasma training set 2 : the cancer cases remained the same , a new category of “ unknown ” was created , the number of controls was 52 ( instead of former 64 ) and the adenoma cases were 39 ( instead of former 49 ). this allowed re - classification of sample types as provided in table 42 . since the corrected information classified a number of unknown cancer cases ( controls ) as early stage cancers , additional conclusions on detection of early stage cancers could be drawn . as shown in table 43 , the plasma panel allowed very sensitive detection ( 70 %) of early stage samples . improved detection could be obtained by excluding samples with a plasma volume less than 2 ml ( table 44 ) catherine lofton - day et al , poster presented april 2007 at the aacr annual meeting 2007 , los angelos , usa : “ clinical case - control study in plasma shows that the dna methylation biomarker , septin 9 , detects 70 % of stage i - iii colorectal cancer patients ” w . m . grady , a . rajput , j . d . lutterbaugh and s . d . markowitz , detection of aberrantly methylated hmlh1 promoterdna in the serum of patients with microsatellite unstable colon cancer , cancer res 61 ( 2001 ), 900 - 902 p . a . jones and s . b . baylin . the fundamental role of epigenetic events in cancer . nat rev genet 3 ( 2002 ), 415 - 428 . p . w . laird . early detection : the power and the promise of dna methylation markers . nat rev cancer 3 ( 2003 ), 253 - 266 . leung w k , to k f , man e p , chan m w , bai a h , hui a j , chan f k , sung j j . quantitative detection of promoter hypermethylation in multiple genes in the serum of patients with colorectal cancer . am j gastroenterol . 2005 october ; 100 ( 10 ): 2274 - 9 nakayama g , hibi k , nakayama h , kodera y , ito k , akiyama s , nakao a . a highly sensitive method for the detection of p16 methylation in the serum of colorectal cancer patients . anticancer res . 2007 may - june ; 27 ( 3b ): 1459 - 63 straub , j . et al ., ab - 104 - aacrmd ( 2007 ), poster presented september 2007 at the aacr meeting “ molecular diagnostics in cancer therapeutic development : maximizing opportunities for personalized treatment . high frequency of dap - kinase gene promoter methylation in colorectal cancer specimens and its identification in serum . hong - zhi zou , bao - ming yu2 , zhi - wei wang , ji - yuan sun , hui cang , fei gao , dong hua li , ren zhao , guo - guang feng and jing yi . detection of aberrant p16 methylation in the serum of colorectal cancer patients . 4 ) n - myc downstream regulated gene 4 ( ndrg4 ) promoter methylation is a sensitive and specific biomarker for colorectal cancer background and aims : n - myc downstream regulated gene 4 ( ndrg4 ), a gene involved in cellular differentiation and neurite formation , is one of the four members of the ndrg family . here we address the role of ndrg4 promoter methylation in crc ( crc ). methods : ndrg4 promoter methylation was analyzed in crc cell lines , well characterised series of normal colon mucosa , colorectal adenomas , carcinomas and other neoplasias using methylation specific pcr ( msp ) and bisulfite sequencing . ndrg4 promoter methylation was also analyzed in fecal dna of crc patients and controls using quantitative msp . loss of heterozygosity ( loh ) mapping of the ndrg4 locus and mutation analysis using direct sequencing of ndrg4 coding exons and their flanking intronic regions were performed . ndrg4 mrna and protein expression was studied using rt - pcr and immunohistochemistry respectively . results : ndrg4 promoter methylation is observed in 7 / 8 crc cell lines . the prevalence of ndrg4 promoter methylation in crc tissue is 86 % ( 71 / 83 ) compared to 4 % ( 2 / 48 ) in normal colon mucosa . a second , independent series of crcs confirmed the high prevalence ( 69 %, 127 / 183 ) of ndrg4 methylation . ndrg4 methylation was also observed in 81 % ( 13 / 16 ) of oesophageal adenocarcinomas and 77 % ( 17 / 22 ) of gastric cancers while no or little methylation was observed in skin ( 0 / 8 ), kidney ( 1 / 10 ), ovary ( 0 / 20 ), prostate ( 0 / 10 ), breast ( 0 / 16 ) and oesophageal squamous cell cancers ( 0 / 12 ). ndrg4 promoter methylation can be detected in fecal dna of 76 % ( 16 / 21 ) of crc patients , while only 3 % ( 2 / 67 ) of control patients tested positive yielding a sensitivity of 76 % and a specificity of 97 %. no mutations were found and 30 , 5 % of tumors showed loh on the ndrg4 locus . expression of ndrg4 is decreased at the rna and protein level in crc when compared to normal tissue . conclusions : ndrg4 is frequently methylated in crc cell lines , colorectal adenomas and carcinomas and other adenocarcinomas of the gastrointestinal tract . ndrg4 promoter methylation in fecal dna can be used as a sensitive and specific biomarker for the detection of crc . previous microarray experiments to identify genes which are epigenetically regulated in tumor endothelial cells revealed 81 genes that are downregulated in tumor endothelial cells and reexpressed after 5 - aza - 2 ′- deoxycytidine ( dac ) and trichostatin a ( tsa ) treatment . silencing of these genes in tumor - endothelial cells was associated with promoter histone h3 deacetylation and loss of h3 lysine 4 methylation , however did not involve dna methylation of promoter cpg islands . interestingly , 21 of these 81 genes ( 26 %) have been reported to be hypermethylated and silenced in various tumor types suggesting that many of the identified gene promoters have the potential to be regulated by promoter methylation in tumor cells ( hellebrekers , melotte et al . 2007 ). amongst the identified cpg island containing genes is n - myc downregulated gene - 4 ( ndrg4 ), also known as smap - 8 and bdm1 . ndrg4 is part of the ndrg family which consists of four members , ndrg1 , - 2 , - 3 and - 4 which have an amino acid sequence homology of 57 - 65 % ( zhou , kokame et al . 2001 ; qu , zhai et al . 2002 ). phylogenetic analysis verified two subfamilies , one consisting of ndrg1 and - 3 and the other consisting of ndrg - 2 and - 4 ( qu , zhai et al . 2002 ). ndrg1 is the most extensively studied member of the ndrg family . expression of ndrg1 is often downregulated in cancer cells ( van belzen , dinjens et al . 1997 ; kurdistani , arizti et al . 1998 ; guan , ford et al . 2000 ; bandyopadhyay , pai et al . 2003 ; bandyopadhyay , pai et al . 2004 ; shah , kemeny et al . 2005 ) and upregulated by dac treatment ( guan , ford et al . 2000 ; bandyopadhyay , pai et al . 2004 ). in addition , ndrg2 has also been described as candidate tumor suppressor gene ( deng , yao et al . 2003 ; lusis , watson et al . 2005 ) and reported to be methylated in meningiomas ( lusis , watson et al . 2005 ) and different cancer cell lines ( liu , wang et al . 2007 ). so far , the function of ndrg3 and ndrg4 in cancer has not been addressed . the ndrg4 gene is located on chromosome 16q21 - q22 . 3 , spans 26 kb and contains 17 exons covering the entire sequence of three cdna isoforms ndrg4 - b , ndrg4 - bvar and ndrg4 - h . ndrg4 mrna is predominantly present in the cytoplasm . at present , expression of ndrg4 has only been described in brain and heart using northern blot analysis . the molecular characterization of ndrg4 and the role of this protein in the nervous system has mainly been investigated in the rat ( nakada , hongo et al . 2002 ; ohki , hongo et al . 2002 ; maeda , hongo et al . 2004 ; hongo , watanabe et al . 2006 ). ndrg4 protein may participate in processes that lead to cellular differentiation and neurite formation ( ohki , hongo et al . 2002 ). here , we report ndrg4 to be expressed in normal colon mucosa and downregulated in colon cancer tissue . in addition , ndrg4 promoter methylation , loss of heterozygosity ( loh ) and mutational inactivation were examined . we identified the ndrg4 promoter as being frequently methylated in crc and other neoplasias of the gastrointestinal tract and investigated its potential as a biomarker in stool of crc patients and controls . crc cell lines ht29 , sw480 , caco2 , colo205 , rko , ls174t , hct116 and sw480 were cultured in dmem ( invitrogen ) supplemented with 10 % heat - inactivated fetal calf serum ( hyclone ). to investigate reexpression of ndrg4 following inhibition of dna methyltransferases , hct116 and rko were treated with 1 μm dac ( sigma ). ndrg4 promoter methylation was investigated in well - characterized series of colorectal carcinomas , adenomas and controls ( fig . 9 ). the first series consists of formalin - fixed , paraffin - embedded crcs ( n = 90 ) of patients over 50 years of age which were retrospectively collected from the archive of the dept . of pathology of the university hospital maastricht . when present , also normal ( n = 79 ) and adenoma ( n = 60 ) tissue was collected from these patients . histologically normal biopsy material from patients undergoing endoscopy for non - specific abdominal complaints ( n = 51 ), adenoma biopsies ( n = 22 ) from patients who did not develop crc within 10 years , and resected colon mucosa of patients with various inflammatory bowel conditions ( n = 33 ) were selected as control tissue . this last group includes crohn &# 39 ; s disease ( n = 1 ), colitis ulcerosa ( n = 6 ), non - specific inflammation ( n = 9 ) and diverticulitis ( n = 18 ). a second independent series of crcs ( n = 200 ) was randomly selected from the prospective netherlands cohort study on diet and cancer ( nlcs ), which has been described in detail elsewhere ( van den brandt , goldbohm et al . 1990 ; brink , de goeij et al . 2003 ). series characteristics are shown in supplemental table 1 in addition , archival , formalin - fixed , paraffin - embedded skin —( n = 8 ), kidney —( n = 10 ), ovary —( n = 10 ), prostate —( n = 10 ), breast —( n = 15 ), stomach —( n = 22 ) and oesophagus ( n = 28 ) cancer tissue was analyzed for ndrg4 promoter methylation . this study was approved by the medical ethical committee ( mec ) of the maastricht university and the university hospital maastricht . a 5 μm section of each tissue block was stained with haematoxylin and eosin and revised by a pathologist ( adb ). five sections of 20 μm were deparaffinated prior to dna - isolation . dna was extracted from these tissue samples and from cell lines using the puregene ® dna isolation kit ( gentra systems ) according to the manufacturers instructions . in brief , cell lysis solution and proteinase k ( 20 mg / ml , qiagen ) were added to the tissue samples and incubated overnight at 55 ° c . subsequently , dna was extracted for 72 h at 37 ° c ., protein was removed , and dna was precipitated using 100 % 2 - propanol . finally , dna was rehydrated in hydration buffer . colonoscopy negative control stool samples ( n = 67 ) were obtained from a population of healthy subjects over 50 years of age which are being screened within the framework of a workplace - based community crc screening study at the university hospital maastricht . the medical ethical committee ( mec ) of the maastricht university , the university hospital maastricht and the dutch ‘ wet op bevolkingsonderzoek ’ ( wbo ) is approving this screening study . stool samples from colonoscopy confirmed crc patients ( n = 21 ) covering all crc stages were collected at the free university medical center in amsterdam . for recovery of human dna , whole stool samples were homogenized in a 7 excess volume of stool homogenization buffer ( exact sciences , marlborough , mass ., usa ) and aliquoted in portions of 32 ml containing the equivalent of 4 g of stool each . single aliquots were centrifuged and the supernatants were incubated with 80 units per ml rnase a for 60 minutes at 37 ° c . total dna was then precipitated using sodium acetate isopropanol ( ph 5 . 2 ), washed with 70 % ethanol and resuspended in 4ml 1 × te ( ph 7 . 4 ). 400 μl 10 × buffer ( 240 mm edta ( ph 8 . 0 ), 750 mm nac ), 400 μl 10 % sds and 20 μl proteinase k ( 20 mg / ml ) was added , samples were incubated overnight at 48 ° c . at constant shaking and centrifuged the next day . additionally , 5 ml of phenol - chloroform - isoamylalcohol was added and samples were incubated for 10 minutes at rt before centrifugation . the phenol - chloroform - isoamylalcohol extraction was repeated , the aqueous layer was subsequently transferred in a new tube , dna was precipitated , washed and pellets were resuspended in 2 ml of lote ( ph 8 . 0 ). sodium bisulfite modification of 500 ng genomic dna was performed using the ez dna methylation kit ( zymo research co ., orange , calif .) according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s instructions . ndrg4 msp analysis on bisulfite treated dna retrieved from cell lines and formalin - fixed , paraffin embedded tissue was facilitated by first amplifying the dna with flanking pcr primers which amplify bisulfite - modified dna but do not discriminate between methylated or unmethylated dna . this pcr product was used as a template for the msp reaction ( herman , graff et al . 1996 ; van engeland , weijenberg et al . 2003 ). flank primers , msp primers and pcr conditions are listed in table 2 ( see above ). all pcrs were performed with controls for unmethylated dna ( dna from normal lymphocytes ), methylated dna ( normal lymphocyte dna treated in vitro with sssi methyltransferase ( new england biolabs ), and a control without dna . ten μl of each msp reaction were directly loaded onto 2 % agarose gel and visualized under uv illumination . for sequencing of sodium bisulfite - converted dna , pcr products were amplified and cloned using the topo - ta cloning kit ( invitrogen , breda , the netherlands ). single colonies were picked and sequenced using an automated sequencer ( applied biosystems , foster city , calif .). primer sequences used are seq id no : 570 5 ′- gatyggggtgttttttaggttt - 3 ′ ( sense primer ) and seq id no : 6 5 ′- craacaaccaaaaacccctc - 3 ′ ( antisense primer ). quantitative real - time msp was performed using a 7900ht real - time pcr system ( applied biosystems ). 2 . 4 μl of the modified dna ( equivalent to 2 . 5 μg unconverted dna ) was added to a pcr mix ( total volume 12 μl ) containing buffer ( 16 . 6 mm ( nh4 ) 2so4 , 67 mm tris ( ph 8 . 8 ), 6 . 7 mm mgcl2 , 10 mm β - mercaptoethanol ), dntps ( 5 mm ), forward primer ( 6 ng ), reverse primer ( 18 ng ), molecular beacon ( 0 . 16 μm ), bsa ( 0 . 1 μg ), and jumpstart dna taq polymerase ( 0 . 4 units ; sigma aldrich ). the pcr program was as follows : 5 minutes 95 ° c ., followed by 45 cycles of 30 seconds 95 ° c ., 30 seconds 57 ° c ., and 30 seconds 72 ° c ., followed by 5 minutes 72 ° c . primer sequences used are seq id no : 17 5 ′- gtattttagtcgcgtagaaggc - 3 ′ ( forward primer ), seq id no : 18 5 ′- aatttaacgaatataaacgctcgac - 3 ′ ( reverse primer ) and seq id no : 19 5 ′- fam - cgacatgcccgaacgaaccgcgatccctgcatgtcg - 3 ′- dabcyl ( molecular beacon ). a standard curve ( 2 × 10 6 - 20 copies ) was included to determine copy numbers of unknown samples by interpolation of their ct values to the standard curve . allelic status was analyzed by pcr amplification with specific primer pairs flanking polymorphic microsatellite loci . the fluorescent dye - labeled microsatellite markers ds1653089 ( forward primer : seq id no : 526 agccctgcctgatgaa ; reverse primer : seq id no : 527 tgtgtgggtagcaccaa ) and ds16s3071 ( forward primer : seq id no : 528 agctctctgatgggcagtg ; reverse primer : seq id no : 529 tggaagatagcccccaaat ) located on 16q21 - 22 were selected from genome public database . ds16s3089 is situated 1 . 9 mb downstream of ndrg4 and ds16s3071 1 . 8 mb upstream of ndrg4 . matched tumor / normal dna samples were amplified by pcr in a 15 μl volume containing 0 . 25 mm dntp , 0 . 3 μm primers , 1 . 5 mm mgcl2 and 0 . 04 units taq - polymerase ( platinum , invitrogen ) using 50 ng dna as template . the reaction mixture was subjected to 3 min of denaturing at 95 ° c . and 30 cycles of 95 ° c . for 1 min , 60 ° c . annealing temperature for 1 min and 72 ° c . for 1 min followed by a final extention step at 72 ° c . for 10 min . pcr products were sequenced using an automated sequencer ( applied biosystems , foster city , calif .) and analyzed using genemapper software version 4 , 0 ( applied biosystems ). only genotypes demonstrating two different sizes , i . e . heterozygous ms alleles , were used for evaluating allelic status . the allelic ratio was calculated as ( n1 / n2 )/( t1 / t2 ) for the ratio of area values of tumor ( t ) versus the normal ( n ) alleles . loh was defined as an allelic ratio more than 1 . 35 and less than 0 . 67 . the ndrg4 coding exons and their flanking intronic regions were individually amplified using genomic dna extracted from paraffine embedded colonic adenocarcinoma tissue . mutation analysis was examined using the nested pcr approach . the outside pcr was performed with 125 ng genomic dna , 50 μmol of each forward and reverse primer and 1 units of taqpolymerase mixture ( invitrogen ). dna amplification was done on a thermal cycler using thermo - fast 96 - well plates ( corning ) starting with an initial denaturation step at 95 ° c . for 3 min , followed by 35 cycles of denaturation at 95 ° c . for 30 s , annealing with an specific temperature for each primer for 30 s and extension at 72 ° c . for 30 sec . an additional final extension of 72 ° c . for 5 min was added . following the outside pcr an inside pcr was done using the same conditions as the outside pcr . pcr primer sets for each exon , including intron - exon boundary , are provided in detail in supplemental table 3 . dna was purified using the millipore multiscreen 96 wells plate ( millipore ). pcr products were amplified using the bigdye ® terminator v1 . 1 cycle sequencing kit and amplified products were sequenced using an abi 3730 dna analyzer ( applied biosystems , foster city , calif .). total rna from cell lines , normal mucosa and tumor tissue was isolated using the rneasy mini kit ( qiagen ) following the manufacturers instructions . possible genomic dna contaminations were removed by dnase treatment with the rnase - free dnase set ( qiagen ). cdna synthesis using the iscript cdna synthesis kit ( bio - rad ) was performed . quantitative real - time ( rt - pcr ) was performed using sybr green pcr master mix ( applied biosystems , nieuwekerk a / d ijssel , the netherlands ). realtime rt - pcr mixes were composed of 1 × iq sybr green supermix ( bio - rad ), 400 nm of the forward ( seq id no : 3 5 ′- ggccttctgcatgtagtgatccg - 3 ′) and reverse ( seq id no : 4 5 ′- ggtgatctcctgcatgtcctcg - 3 ′) primer and cdna corresponding to 30 ng total rna per reaction . as standard control , primers targeted against cyclophilin a were used . reactions were run using the icycler ( bio - rad ) for 40 cycles at a tm of 60 ° c . the comparative ct method was used to calculate differences in mrna expression . to do so , the ct value of each sample was normalized to the reference gene ([ delta ] ct = ct , sample − ct , cyclo ). next , the fold difference in expression was calculated as 2 - [ delta ][ delta ] ct , with [ delta ][ delta ] ct =[ delta ] ct , sample1 −[ delta ] ct , control . immunohistochemistry was performed on formalin - fixed , paraffin embedded tissue sections ( 5 μm ) of normal colon mucosa and crc tissue . sections were deparaffinized in xylene , rehydrated and incubated with 1 % methanol for 30 minutes to inactivate the endogenous peroxidase . after blocking , sections were stained with the ndrg4 monoclonal antibody ( abnova corporation ), 1 : 6000 diluted in tris - buffered saline ( tbs ) with 0 . 1 % tween and 0 . 5 % bovine serum albumin ( bsa ) and incubated for 60 minutes . sections were incubated with the secondary antibody poly - hrp - gam / r / r igg ( immunologic , immunovision technologies ) and staining was visualized as a brown precipitate using dab substrate chromogen ( dako ) followed by haematoxylin counterstaining . sections incubated without the primary antibody served as a negative control . we used the pearson &# 39 ; s χ2 or fisher &# 39 ; s exact test and the one - way anova , kruskal - wallis or mann - witney test where appropriate to compare non - parametric and categorical data respectively . paired samples within the group of cases were analyzed using the mcnemar test and the paired t - test to compare non - parametric and categorical data respectively . logistic regression analysis was used to compare categorical data adjusted for age and location of the tissue since significant differences in age and location of the different tissues were observed between crc cases and controls . all quoted p - values are two - sided , and a p - value 0 . 05 or lower was considered statistically significant . all statistical tests were corrected for multiple comparisons using the bonferroni method . data analysis was done using spss software ( version 12 . 0 . 1 ). the structure of the ndrg4 gene shows a dense cpg island ( gc content & gt ; 60 %, ratio of observed cpg / expected cpg & gt ; 0 . 6 and minimum length 200 bp ( gardiner - garden and frommer 1987 )) located − 556 to + 869 relative to the transcription start site as shown in fig1 . to assay this region for potential methylation we designed two different msp primer pairs ( 1 and 2 ) amplifying overlapping fragments in the cpg island . these primers were initially used to investigate eight crc cell lines ( ls174 , hct116 , ht29 , rko , caco2 , colo2 , sw48 and sw480 ) for dna methylation . all cell lines except sw480 were methylated as analyzed by msp using both primer pairs as shown in fig1 a . to further investigate the pattern of cpg island methylation we performed sodium bisulfite sequencing of hct116 and sw480 . the promoter region spanning 39 cpg sites was pcr - amplified using sodium bisulfite - modified genomic dna as template and six clones of each cell lines were sequenced . bisulfite sequencing confirmed msp data in that hct116 showed almost complete methylation at 39 sites as depicted in fig1 b , whereas sw480 showed almost no methylated cpg sites . endogenous ndrg4 mrna levels in crc cell lines hct116 and rko were significant increased after treatment with dac ( fig1 c ). methylation of ndrg4 was confirmed in three pairs of primary tumors and matched normal colonic mucosa by sodium bisulfite sequencing . the results depicted in fig1 a show dense methylation of the three tumor samples while almost no methylation was observed in the normal colon mucosa . interestingly , the density of methylation was higher in the upstream region of the ndrg4 cpg island when compared to more downsteam region as shown in fig1 a . subsequently , the methylation status of ndrg4 was investigated in colorectal carcinoma , adenoma and normal colorectal mucosa using two different primer pairs ( 1 and 2 ). the methylation frequenties using both primer pairs are depicted in table 47 . a significant difference ( table 47 , p = 0 . 042 10 − 7 ) was observed in methylation frequencies in normal mucosa of the control group ( 2 / 48 ( 4 %)) compared to cancer tissue of crc patients ( 71 / 83 ( 86 %)) using primer pair 2 . in addition , we compared ndrg4 promoter methylation in adjacent normal mucosa tissue of crc patients ( 9 / 78 ( 12 %)) and the normal mucosa of non - cancerous patients ( 2 / 48 ( 4 %) but did not find a significant difference among these two groups ( table 47 ). furthermore , to investigate ndrg4 methylation in premalignant lesions , we compared adenomas obtained from crc patients that developed synchronously or metachronously to the tumour and adenomas obtained from patients that did not develop crc after 10 years of follow - up . we observed a higher prevalence of ndrg4 methylation in adenomas from crc patients although these differences did not reach statistical significance ( table 47 ). to confirm the high prevalence of ndrg4 promoter methylation in crc , we analyzed a second independent series of 183 crc samples . comparable to the results of the first study series we observed that 70 % ( 127 / 183 ) of crc patients presented ndrg4 methylation . further analysis of the clinicopathologic features of patients with primary crc with regard to ndrg4 promoter methylation did not reveal any association with age at diagnosis , sex , location of the tumor or the tnm stage for both independent series using primer 2 ( table 49 ). to investigate ndrg4 promoter methylation during cancer progression we compared the frequency of methylation from normal mucosa to adenoma and carcinoma tissues in patients for which all the three tissues were available ( table 48 ). our results show that ndrg4 is significantly ( table 48 , p & lt ; 0 . 02 10 − 2 ) more frequently methylated in carcinomas ( 84 %) compared to normal mucosa adjacent to the tumor ( 16 %). in addition to the carcinomas , adenoma samples from crc patients also exhibit significantly ( table 48 , p & lt ; 0 . 03 10 − 3 ) higher ndrg4 methylation frequencies ( 61 %) compared to normal colon samples ( 14 %). finally , ndrg4 methylation was increased in carcinoma tissues ( 81 %) compared to adenoma samples ( 63 %) although this enhancement was not significant ( primer pair 2 , table 48 ). the different series were analyzed using two different primer pairs 1 and 2 amplifying overlapping fragments in the cpg island , as depicted in fig1 . using primer pair 1 we observed overall the same results compared to primer pair 2 however we found an increase of ndrg4 methylation for all the subgroups using primer pair 2 compared to primer pair 1 . interestingly , we found a significant difference ( table 2 , p = 0 . 012 ) in promoter methylation in adenomas of crc patients ( 55 / 77 ( 41 %)) compared to the carcinomas ( 55 / 77 ( 71 %)) which was not observed using primer pair 2 . in addition , comparing the ndrg4 methylation status of adenomas obtained from crc patients that developed synchronously or metachronously to the tumour ( 24 / 58 ( 41 %)) and adenomas obtained from patients that did not develop crc ( 4 / 31 ( 13 %) we observed a enormous increase of ndrg4 methylation in adenomas from crc patients using primer pair 1 although these differences also did also not reach statistical significance . further analysis of the clinicopathologic features of patients with primary crc with regard to ndrg4 promoter methylation for both independent series did not reveal any association with age at diagnosis , sex or the tnm stage . however , we did find a significant correlation between promoter methylation and the location of the tumor using primer pair 1 ( table 49 , p = 0 . 034 ). next , we asked whether ndrg4 promoter methylation is present in other tumor tissues . therefore 119 primary tumor specimens covering 7 different tumor types were analyzed using msp primer pair 2 . no or little methylation was found in skin ( 0 / 8 , 0 %), kidney ( 1 / 10 , 10 %), ovary ( 0 / 20 , 0 %), prostate ( 0 / 10 , 0 %) and breast ( lobular ( 0 / 7 , 0 %) and ductal ( 0 / 9 , 0 %)) carcinomas . in contrast , ndrg4 promoter was frequently methylated in adenocarcinomas of the esophagus ( 13 / 16 , 81 %), while no methylation was found in esophageal squamous cancers ( 0 / 12 , 0 %). both diffuse type ( 8 / 11 , 73 %) and intestinal type ( 9 / 11 , 82 %) carcinomas of the stomach were frequently methylated while the normal mucosa of the stomach did not show any methylation ( 0 / 5 , 0 %). the high prevalence of ndrg4 promoter methylation in crc and the absence of methylation in normal colon mucosa suggest that ndrg4 promoter methylation could be a sensitive and specific biomarker for non - invasive detection of crc . therefore , we developed a quantitative msp assay using molecular beacon technology and analyzed fecal dna of 21 crc patients and 67 healthy controls . ndgr4 promoter methylation could be detected in 16 / 21 crc patients yielding a 76 % sensitivity for the detection of crc . only 2 / 67 ( 3 %) of healthy controls tested positive for ndrg4 methylation , which resulted in a clinical specificity for the assay of 97 %. stool samples were obtained from crc patients covering all different tnm stages . the assay had a 75 % sensitivity among crc patients with early stage colon cancer ( stage i and ii ) and 80 % of sensitivity among later stage patients ( stage iii and iv ). to analyse whether methylation of the promoter cpg island of ndrg4 is associated with gene silencing we investigated mrna expression of ndrg4 in crc cell lines , three pairs of crc tissues and matching normal colon mucosa . in all three crcs , mrna levels were significantly downregulated ( 97 , 70 % and 98 % respectively ) when compared to normal colon mucosa fig1 b ). to investigate the protein expression of ndrg4 in both normal colonic mucosa and colon cancers , we performed ndrg4 immunohistochemistry demonstrating the presence of ndrg4 protein expression in the cytoplasm of normal colon mucosa while protein expression is lost in half of crcs ( fig1 c ). subsequently , we performed immunohistochemical analysis of ndrg4 expression on 19 crc samples . eleven of these patients had a methylated ndrg4 promoter . however , we could not find a significant association between ndrg4 promoter methylation and ndrg4 expression ( data not shown ). this observation suggests that other mechanisms might lead to ndrg4 inactivation . loss of heterozygosity and mutation analysis of the ndrg4 gene in crc macrodissected crc tissue and corresponding normal tissues of 86 crc patients were analyzed using the microsatellite markers ds16s3089 and ds16s3071 . the two markers showed a heterozygosity of 77 . 4 % and 35 . 4 % respectively . of these , 59 cases were informative ; 18 tumors ( 30 , 5 %) showed loh with at least one marker on chromosome 16q . twelve primary crc and crc cell lines hct116 and sw480 were analyzed for ndrg4 mutations . no inactivating mutations within the coding region of the ndrg4 gene were detected in 12 colorectal carcinomas . however , we found one novel nonsynonymous mutation in the sw480 cell line ( 40662a → ag ile65val ). as part of the mutational analysis , 2 previously reported snps ( ncbi snp database ) were detected . one snp was observed in 1 / 12 crc patients ( 43760g → gg val224val refsnp rs 17821543 ). the second snp was observed in 9 / 12 crc patients ( 48311a → ag ser354ser refsnp rs 42945 ). the progression of crc from small benign colorectal adenomas to larger and more dysplastic lesions takes several decades and identifying early stages would improve management and treatment of this disease ( brenner and rennert 2005 ). colonoscopy is currently the best technique for detecting crc or its precursor lesions from the age of 50 years onwards . testing for the presence of fecal occult blood ( fobt ) as preselection for colonoscopy is the only non - invasive screening method with proven effectiveness , reducing both the incidence and the risk of death from crc when used programmatically . however , both sensitivity and specificity of fobt is low and therefore there is an urgent need for more sensitive and specific non - invasive screening tests . a promising option is analyzing ( expression of ) cancer - specific molecules such as dna , rna and protein in blood and tissue . first attempts to detect genetic alterations are promising ( dong , traverso et al . 2001 ; traverso , shuber et al . 2002 ) although still need improvement . markers of choice have been tp53 , k - ras and apc mutations and in addition bat - 26 instability and long dna ( a marker for non - apoptotic shedding of epithelial colonocytes ). recently , cpg island hypermethylation can also be used as a ( prognostic ) marker for non - invasive detection of crc in different biological samples ( esteller 2003 ; chen , han et al . 2005 ; ebert , model et al . 2006 ). over the last years , several genes have been described to be methylated in crc using different techniques . here we used msp , quantitative msp and bisulfite sequencing to analyse ndrg4 as a biomarker for the early detection of colorectal and other gastrointestinal cancers . ( array ) the ndrg4 promoter cpg island was demonstrated to be methylated in two independent large series of crc cases . in the first series we included normal mucosa of non - cancerous patients since the normal mucosa from the crc patients is situated within the same bowel segment as the tumor and can be contaminated with malignant cells or a field - effect could have change the molecular signature of this cell as described for mgmt ( issa , 2005 ). nevertheless , by performing statistical analysis we could not find any significantly difference in methylation between these two groups . chronic inflammation has previously been shown to accelerate dna methylation in normal tissues ( issa , ahuja et al . 2001 ). therefore additional screens with inflamed colon mucosa are expected in a screening setting . in our study population , inclusion of inflamed mucosa to the normal mucosa of control patients slightly reduced the specificity of ndrg4 from 96 % to 94 %. because we found a difference in the density of methylation in the promoter area of ndrg4 by bisulfite sequencing , we used two different primer sets to investigated the methylation status of ndrg4 . interestingly , using primer pair 2 , we found 86 % of methylation in carcinoma tissue while only 71 % was observed by use of primer pair 1 . this increased detection of methylation using primer pair 2 was observed for all the subgroups of this series as shown in table 47 . primer pair 2 is situated more to the 5 ′ region of the gene . the frequencies of methylation were lower near the transcription start site . we hypothesize that ndrg4 hypermethylation initially occurs at the 5 ′ end of the ndrg4 cpg island and spreads towards the transcription start site before ultimately shutting down ndrg4 mrna expression , as has also been observed for runx3 ( turker 2002 ; homma , tamura et al . 2006 ). in addition , we found a significant difference ( p = 0 . 012 ) in methylation frequency using primer pair 1 , between adenoma tissue and carcinoma tissue within the group of crcs . therefore , we speculated , that spreading of dna methylation in the promoter area of ndrg4 towards the transcription start site occurs during cancer progression . remarkably , using primer pair 1 , hypermethylation was more frequently present in progressed adenomas from the crc patients ( 41 %) when compared to the non progressing adenomas of the crc - patients ( 13 %). the capacity to distinguish adenomas that progress to cancer from those that will not progress is highly important for crc screening ( hermsen , postma et al . 2002 ). whereas this difference can not be made macroscopically , endoscopic screening strategies aiming to detect and remove all adenomas will be inherently unspecific . the majority of adenomas removed would not have progressed to cancer because only a small percentage of these benign precursor lesions will progress into a carcinoma ( lengauer , kinzler et al . 1998 ). these data might indicate that ndrg4 promoter methylation in adenoma tissue ( in the region we investigated ) is a possible risk factor for developing a colon tumor . recently , it has been reported that promoter methylation can be detected in biological fluids such as blood , urine or stool and may allow early diagnosis of various cancers , including crc . some studies have shown that methylation of one gene promoter can be used as a screening method for fecal dna methylation detection . for example , promoter methylation of sfr2 , vimentin and hic1 can be detected in fecal dna of crc patients with a sensitivity of 77 %, 43 % and 42 % respectively and a specificity of 77 %, 90 % and 95 % respectively ( muller , oberwalder et al . 2004 ; chen , han et al . 2005 ; lenhard , bommer et al . 2005 ). ndrg4 methylation in fecal dna as a single marker can differentiate cancer from controls with a sensitivity of 76 % and a specificity of 97 %. in order to be a specific biomarker for crc , analysis of tissue specificity was performed ; we found ndrg4 methylation in other tumors of the gastrointestinal tract , namely oesophagus and gastric cancers . this data indicate that methylation of ndrg4 may serve as a marker for other gastrointestinal tumors as well . we next studied whether methylation of ndrg4 is associated with downregulation of ndrg4 rna and protein expression . so far , the expression of ndrg4 has only been documented in the brain and heart by use of northern blotting . we observed expression of ndrg4 in normal colon tissue and downregulation in al three tumor tissues . subsequently , we performed immunohistochemical analysis of ndrg4 expression on 19 crc samples from the crc patients for which paraffin - embedded tissues were available . eleven of these patients had a methylated ndrg4 promoter . however , we could not find a significant association between ndrg4 promoter methylation and ndrg4 expression . some tumors had a methylated ndrg4 promoter although still expressed ndrg4 protein . the methylation that we detected using msp might reflect methylation of only a few cancer cells or methylation of only one of two ndrg4 alleles ( and absence in the other ). nevertheless , some tumors lack expression of ndrg4 protein while no promoter methylation was observed . this observation suggests that other mechanisms might lead to ndrg4 inactivation . no mutations were found , indicating that mutational inactivation of the ndrg4 gene might not play a mayor role in crc . our results confirmed previous data on ndrg4 mutation studies ( sjoblom , jones et al . 2006 ). however , loh at 16q is seen in about 30 % of the crc cases . frequent loh of 16q had previously been described in a wide variety of solid tumor types as breast ( rakha , green et al . 2006 ), liver ( sakai , nagahara et al . 1992 ; 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( 2001 ). “ characterization of the human ndrg gene family : a newly identified member , ndrg4 , is specifically expressed in brain and heart .” genomics 73 ( 1 ): 86 - 97 . 5 ) additional real - time msp assays tested on plasmid material for ndrg4 and osmr genes plasmid material corresponding to a promoter region of ndrg4 and osmr gene was used to test additional assay designs . the plasmid for the standard curve was generated as follows : the promoter sequence as defined by the primers is pcr amplified and cloned ( using suitable isolated and bisulphite modified cell line dna ). the sequence is verified by sequencing and compared to the published promoter sequence . a serial dilution of either ndrg4 or osmr plasmid material ( 2 × 10 6 to 2 × 10 1 copies / 5 μl ) was loaded in duplicate . 5 μl of plasmid dilution or buffer ( non template control ) was added to a 20 μl pcr mix containing the specified primer and beacon detector sequences as previously described . results were generated using the sds 2 . 2 software from applied biosystems with automatic baseline and threshold settings . data were exported as ct values ( cycle number at which the amplification curves cross the threshold value , set automatically by the software ). initial real - time results for 2 different ndrg4 assay designs are presented in table 50 and 51 . the primer and beacon combinations used for the respective assays ndrg4 — 1a and ndrg4 — 1b were previously described . underscore 1a and 1b reflect the different primer and / or beacon combinations used for assessing the methylation status of the ndrg4 gene . ndrg4 — 1a corresponds to the preferred ndrg4 assay design , also simply referred to as ndrg4 ( see table 4 ). comparable results were obtained for both assay designs . clinical sample data provided in this invention are generated using the preferred ndrg4 assay design (= ndrg4 = ndrg4 — 1a ) table 51 real time msp results obtained for ndrg4_1b assay on plasmid material . resulting standard curve ( y = − 3 . 4181x + 40 . 991 ; r2 = 0 . 9991 ) corresponds to a pcr efficiency of 99 . 2 %. log average assay task ct quantity copies duplicate ct ct δct ndrg4_1b standard 19 . 48 2000000 6 . 30 19 . 59 19 . 53 0 . 12 ndrg4_1b standard 22 . 93 200000 5 . 30 22 . 92 22 . 92 0 . 01 ndrg4_1b standard 26 . 26 20000 4 . 30 26 . 18 26 . 22 0 . 08 ndrg4_1b standard 29 . 65 2000 3 . 30 29 . 67 29 . 66 0 . 02 ndrg4_1b standard 32 . 82 200 2 . 30 32 . 83 32 . 82 0 . 01 ndrg4_1b standard 36 . 75 20 1 . 30 36 . 91 36 . 83 0 . 16 ndrg4_1b ntc undetermined 0 undetermined undet undet initial real - time results for 3 different osmr assay designs are presented in below tables 52 to 54 . the primer and beacon combinations used for the respective assays osmr — 1 , osmr — 3 [= omsr ( 3 )] and osmr — 4 [= osmr ( 4 )] were previously described . underscore 1 , 3 and 4 reflect the different primer and / or beacon combinations used for assessing the methylation status of the osmr gene . comparable results were obtained for all three assay designs . new markers added : bnip3 , foxe1 , jam3 , phactr3 , tpfi2 , sox17 and syne1 ( and also jph3 stool data ). suitable primers and probes for determining the methylation status of these genes are set forth in tables 12 ( and 13 to 18 ) above . experiments were performed as previously described . briefly dna was extracted from stool and / or plasma followed by bisulfite treatment . samples were tested by real - time msp assays , using 384 well plates with a 12 μl final volume . the template volume is 2 . 4 μl with a mix volume of 9 . 6 μl . results were generated using the sds 2 . 2 software ( applied biosystems ), exported as ct values ( cycle number at which the amplification curves cross the threshold value , set automatically by the software ). copy numbers are extrapolated using a standard curve . the individual performance of the 8 gene assays tfpi2 , bnip3 , foxe1 , syne1 , sox17 , phactr3 , jam3 and jph3 in plasma and stool samples is shown in table xv ( except for jph3 : stool data only ). sensitivity values for plasma and stool are ranging from 30 to 70 % and 0 to 57 % respectively with a corresponding specificity of a 100 %. when optimizing for sensitivity , 80 % sensitivity for tfpi2 and 50 % sensitivity for phactr3 is obtained in plasma samples with a corresponding specificity of 90 %. it is observed that for some markers ( tfpi2 , bnip3 , foxe1 , syne1 and sox17 ) sensitivity of colorectal cancer detection is higher when using plasma samples compared to stool samples . the present invention is not to be limited in scope by the specific embodiments described herein . indeed , various modifications of the invention in addition to those described herein will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the foregoing description and accompanying figures . such modifications are intended to fall within the scope of the appended claims . moreover , all embodiments described herein are considered to be broadly applicable and combinable with any and all other consistent embodiments , as appropriate . various publications are cited herein , the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference in their entireties .