Methylation profiles of the BRCA1 promoter in hereditary and sporadic breast cancer among Han Chinese.

The development of breast cancer is a multistep process associated with complex changes in host gene expression patterns including inactivation of tumor suppressor genes and activation of oncogenes. Critically, hereditary predisposition plays a significant role in cancer susceptibility. However, mutation of the BRCA1 gene is found only in the minority of hereditary breast cancer, which indicates that there might be alternative, novel mechanisms contributing to inactivation of the BRCA1 gene. Studies have shown that aberrant methylation of genomic DNA plays an important role in carcinogenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate whether DNA methylation may be an alternative mechanism for the inactivation of BRCA1 as an epigenetic modification of the genome and whether hereditary breast cancer has a different BRCA1 methylation phenotype pattern than sporadic breast cancer. The pattern of CpG island methylation within the promoter region of BRCA1 was assessed by bisulfite sequencing DNA from peripheral blood cells of 72 patients with hereditary predisposition but without BRCA1 mutations and 30 sporadic breast cancer controls. The overall methylation level in patients with hereditary predisposition was significantly lower than that in the sporadic control group. However, patients with hereditary predisposition showed a significantly higher methylation susceptibility for the sites -518 when compared to controls. These results suggest that there might be different BRCA1 promoter methylation levels and patterns in sporadic and hereditary breast cancer in peripheral blood DNA. These findings may facilitate the early diagnosis of hereditary breast cancer.