Hi,

I've studied methylation in cancer cell lines and identified a region that is methylated in the cell lines but not in the same region in healthy controls. Interesting I thought, but when a run some primary tumours they looked like the controls.

I haven't seen any articles that has reported methylation in cell lines but not in primary tumors, usually it seems like methylation is also found in tumors but perhaps at a lower frequency. Does anyone have experience in this, is it normal to find methylation in cell lines but not in tumors? Is the methylated region I found in the cell lines interesting or not? Suggestions?

Thanks!

I think it comes down to what type of tumours you are looking at and what gene loci you have decided to pick to analyse for methylation.

There is a paper published with regard to cell line methylation here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...4172&query_hl=1

hope this helps.

Thanks methylnick.

According to the abstract (I haven't been able to get the full text article), there are a lot of CpG island methylation in cell lines that don't correspond to the state in primary tumours. If that's true, there is no point in using cell lines as a first screening method for methylation before you look into primary tumors. But there are a lot of publications on methylation based on studies in cell lines....

Comments?

That's the general feel I get from the field, if you perform methylation studies in cell lines, reviewers are rather dubious about the results you present.

Indeed many studies have been in cell-lines (transformed, established and the like) and have been used to "model" primary tumor lines very loosely.

If you choose to look at cell lines you have to prove to a good reviewer that the methylation you are seeing is not a cell line effect but a tumor/cancer effect.