Repetitive DNA hypomethylation in the advanced phase of chronic myeloid leukemia

✍ Scribed by Jose Roman-Gomez; Antonio Jimenez-Velasco; Xabier Agirre; Juan A. Castillejo; German Navarro; Edurne San Jose-Eneriz; Leire Garate; Lucia Cordeu; Francisco Cervantes; Felipe Prosper; Anabel Heiniger; Antonio Torres

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 165 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0145-2126
• DOI: 10.1016/j.leukres.2007.07.021

✦ Synopsis

Repetitive elements are heavily methylated in normal tissues, but hypomethylated in malignant tissues, driving the global genomic hypomethylation found in cancer. This hypomethylation results in chromosomal instability, a well-characterized feature of the advanced phases of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). We investigated methylation changes of DNA repetitive elements (LINE1, Alu, Satellite-alpha and Satellite-2) during the progression of CML from chronic phase (CP) to blast crisis (BC). CP-CML samples were significantly more hypomethylated for all repetitive sequences compared with normal samples. Furthermore, a more profound level of hypomethylation was observed among BC samples compared with CP samples. Our data suggest that repetitive DNA hypomethylation are closely associated with CML progression.