Association of Promoter Methylation Patterns with Expression of MAPK14 in Tissue of Papillary Thyroid Cancer Patients

Shahdust, Maryam; Zarredar, Habib; Asadi, Milad; Caner, Ayse; Dehghan, Mahshid; Soleimani, Zahra; Seyednejad, Farshad; Raeisi, Mortaza

doi:10.31557/APJCP.2023.24.10.3509

Association of Promoter Methylation Patterns with Expression of MAPK14 in Tissue of Papillary Thyroid Cancer Patients

Document Type : Research Articles

Authors

¹ Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.

² Department of Basic Oncology, Health Institute of Ege University, Izmir, Turkey.

³ Department of Radiation Oncology, Tabriz university of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.

⁴ Hematology and Oncology Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.

10.31557/APJCP.2023.24.10.3509

Abstract

Background: Thyroid cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies worldwide. Genetic and epigenetic alterations are one of the main causes of thyroid tumor that is responsible to the activation of oncogenes as well as the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. This research aimed to investigate the relationship of promoter methylation patterns with the expression of P38α in Iranian patients with thyroid cancer. Methods: We collected 40 thyroid tumor samples and 40 adjacent normal thyroid samples from 40 Iranian patients with papillary thyroid cancer. The promoter methylation pattern of P38α gene was investigated by methylation-sensitive high-resolution melting (MS-HRM) method. Moreover, mRNA expression of P38α was investigated by Real-Time PCR method. Further validation of the obtained results was performed by the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset. Results: The obtained results indicated that the expression of the P38α (MAPK-14) gene in the thyroid cancer sample was considerably higher than tumor margin sample. Also, P38α gene promoter methylation was higher in thyroid margin tissue as compared to tumor tissue. These results were additionally confirmed by TCGA analysis. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed a high accuracy of P38α gene expression as a diagnostic biomarker for thyroid malignancy. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that the P38α expression level gene was associated with thyroid cancer pathogenesis among the Iranian population. We suggested that this gene expression might be used as a biomarker for diagnosis of thyroid tumor.

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