We found a significant association between the localization of RET mutations and the expression of three genes: NNAT (suggested to be a tumour suppressor gene), CDC14B (involved in cell cycle control) and NTRK3 (tyrosine receptor kinase that undergoes rearrangement in papillary thyroid cancer).
An analysis of DNA methylation in two potential regulatory regions of the NNAT locus by pyrosequencing revealed significant hypomethylation of the tumors compared to normal kidney tissue.
In conclusion, the high expressions of Nnat were found to be associated with good prognoses in neuroblastoma, which might indicate tumor differentiation, and its suppressions in unfavorable tumors are considered to be under epigenetic control.
Neuronatin expression is specific for tumor tissue and was detected in both pulmonary adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma at high frequency, particularly in less differentiated tumors.
An optimum formulation for in vivo application, PEI22/Tf-PEG-PEI/PEI22-PEG5, containing plasmid DNA encoding for the tumor necrosis factor (TNF-alpha), inhibited tumor growth in three different murine tumor models.