These findings suggest FHIT methylation is associated with a higher susceptibility and has a prognostic significance in early stage lung cancer in the Han population of southern-central China and may represent a marker for progressive disease.
The purpose of the study was to explore the application of artificial neural network model in the auxiliary diagnosis of lung cancer and compare the effects of back-propagation (BP) neural network with Fisher discrimination model for lung cancer screening by the combined detections of four biomarkers of p16, RASSF1A and FHIT gene promoter methylation levels and the relative telomere length.
Furthermore, abnormal cells were found in 76% sputum by detecting combined HYAL2 and FHIT deletions whereas in 47% sputum by cytology, of the cancer cases, implying that detecting the combination of HYAL2 and FHIT deletions had higher sensitivity than that of sputum cytology for lung cancer diagnosis.
To avoid overlooking tumor-specific altered transcripts due to contaminating normal cells in primary tumors, FHIT alterations were examined in 41 lung cancer cell lines in the present study.
Expression of these genes was evaluated by real-time polymerase chain reaction in 55 primary lung cancer samples characterized for FHIT and p53 expression by immunehistochemistry.
The SVM and DT models for diagnosing lung cancer were successfully developed through the combined detection of p16, RASSF1A and FHIT promoter methylation and RTL, which provided useful tools for screening lung cancer.
We analyzed FHIT gene aberrations in 64 lung cancer tissues and found that the appearance of the aberrant FHIT transcripts depends on the condition of RT-PCR and high telomerase activity, shortened telomere length, and advanced pathological stage were likely associated with the prevalence of aberrant FHIT transcripts, but not with allelic loss of the FHIT gene.
The coincidence of a chromosomal fragile site, FRA3B, at a common chromosomal breakpoint in lung cancer has suggested that fragility at this site may predispose to breakage that could contribute to multistep carcinogenesis.
Using the LightCycler RT-PCR assay, decreased FHIT gene expression might occur early and play an important role in lung tumorigenesis and also correlate with the prognosis of lung cancer.