Promoter methylation of tumor-related genes as a potential biomarker using blood samples for gastric cancer detection.

Gene promoter methylation has been reported in gastric cancer (GC). However, the potential applications of blood-based gene promoter methylation as a noninvasive biomarker for GC detection remain to be evaluated. Hence, we performed this analysis to determine whether promoter methylation of 11 tumor-related genes could become a promising biomarker in blood samples in GC. We found that the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (), E-cadherin (), runt-related transcription factor 3 (), human mutL homolog 1 (), RAS association domain family protein 1A (), cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2B (), adenomatous polyposis coli (), Glutathione S-transferase P1 (), TP53 dependent G2 arrest mediator candidate (), and O6-methylguanine-DNAmethyl-transferase () promoter methylation was notably higher in blood samples of patients with GC compared with non-tumor controls. While death-associated protein kinase () promoter methylation was not correlated with GC. Further analyses demonstrated that , and promoter methylation had a good diagnostic capacity in blood samples of GC versus non-tumor controls (: sensitivity = 63.2% and specificity = 97.5%, : sensitivity = 61.5% and specificity = 96.3%, : sensitivity = 82.0% and specificity = 89.0%). Our findings indicate that promoter methylation of the , and genes could be powerful and potential noninvasive biomarkers for the detection and diagnosis of GC in blood samples in clinical practices, especially gene. Further well-designed (multi-center) and prospective clinical studies with large populations are needed to confirm these findings in the future.