摘自：PLoS ONE 发布时间：2011-12-06

卵巢癌是女性的一个重要健康问题。鉴定敏感生物标志物以用于疾病早期诊断和/或复发监测具有重要的临床意义。
12月7日，PLoS ONE杂志网站刊登了一项新的研究成果，由美国南加州大学的Peter W. Laird领导的研究小组发现了卵巢癌相关的一个新的DNA标记。研究发现，检测卵巢肿瘤和卵巢癌病人血液样品，在特定DNA位点均出现高频率的DNA甲基化修饰。

胡春凌 编译

原文：

Unique genetic marker may improve detection of recurrent ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is a major health concern for women and the identification of sensitive biomarkers for early detection and/or monitoring of disease recurrence is of high clinical relevance.

New work published in the Dec. 7 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE reports promising advances toward the development of blood-based DNA markers for ovarian cancer.

The researchers, led by Peter W. Laird of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, found that a DNA modification called "methylation" at a specific DNA site occurs frequently in ovarian tumors and can also be detected in the blood of ovarian cancer patients. This newly described methylation site was identified through a rigorous high-throughput screening process that tested over 27,000 different sites in the genome.

The epigenetic marker identified in this study was shown to have the potential to monitor disease status after surgery and might therefore prove helpful in enhancing the performance of existing biomarkers for disease recurrence.

More information: Campan M, Moffitt M, Houshdaran S, Shen H, Widschwendter M, et al. (2011) Genome-Scale Screen for DNA Methylation-Based Detection Markers for Ovarian Cancer. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28141. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028141.