BioProject

Cancer relapse after curative treatment is thought to originate from drug-tolerant and invisible cancer cell subpopulations. More...

Cancer relapse after curative treatment is thought to originate from drug-tolerant and invisible cancer cell subpopulations. Using cancer cell colonies emerging in the presence of drugs (drug-tolerant colonies, DTCs), we found that the drug-tolerant properties of DTCs are lost through a reversible mechanism. To examine whether epigenetic regulation is responsible for the phenotypic changes in DTCs, we performed a genome-wide analysis for relative CpG methylation between the DTCs and untreated colonies derived from MKN45 by NimbleGen Human Meth 385K Prom Plus CpG Arrays. Global changes in the methylation levels were evident in a chromosomal location-dependent manner. The methylation status of the upstream regions of the transcription start sites of the pluripotency-inducing genes showed good agreement with the qRT-PCR data. These results suggest that reversible drug-tolerant properties in DTCs are epigenetically regulated and associated with transcriptional regulation, including pluripotency-inducing factors. Overall design: Comparison of untreated colonies v.s. DTCs derived from MKN45 cells. Less...