Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 28, 2018; 24(44): 5013-5024
Published online Nov 28, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i44.5013
Involvement of methylation-associated silencing of formin 2 in colorectal carcinogenesis
Dao-Jiang Li, Zhi-Cai Feng, Xiao-Rong Li, Gui Hu
Dao-Jiang Li, Xiao-Rong Li, Gui Hu, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, the Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China
Zhi-Cai Feng, Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery, the Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China
Author contributions: Li DJ, Li XR, and Hu G contributed to conceptualization and design of the study, analyzed the data, and coordinated the research; Li DJ and Feng ZC performed the majority of the experiments and analyzed the data; all authors drafted the article and made revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript, and approved the final version of the article to be published.
Supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China, No. 81773130; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University(the Key Projects of Postgraduate Independent Exploration and Innovation of Central South University, No. 2018zzts050); and the New Xiangya Talent Projects of the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, No. JY201508.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Central South University. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: To the best of our knowledge, no conflict of interest exists.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author to: Gui Hu, PhD, Surgeon, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, the Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, No. 172, Tongzi Po Road, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China. xy3zzz@csu.edu.cn.
Telephone: +86-13908472002 Fax: +86-731-88618832
Received: August 20, 2018
Peer-review started: August 20, 2018
First decision: October 11, 2018
Revised: October 14, 2018
Accepted: November 7, 2018
Article in press: November 7, 2018
Published online: November 28, 2018
Processing time: 100 Days and 0.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the leading cause of cancer death in the world. We identified a statistically significant downregulation of formin 2 (FMN2) expression in large-scale human CRC expression datasets and our clinical samples. Then, we first showed that a high frequency of hypermethylation occurred in the FMN2 gene promoter, which is responsible for the downregulation of FMN2 expression. Additionally, the highest methylation of FMN2 occurred in tissues from cases of early-stage CRC and patients > 60 years old. FMN2 hypermethylation may be an important early event in CRC and can serve as an ideal diagnostic biomarker in elderly patients with early-stage CRC.