Background: The objective of this study was to discover DNA methylation biomarkers for detecting non-small lung cancer (NSCLC) in bronchial washings and understanding the association between DNA methylation and smoking cessation.
Methods: DNA methylation was analyzed in bronchial washing samples from 70 NSCLCs and 53 hospital-based controls using Illumina HumanMethylation450K BeadChip. Methylation levels in these bronchial washings were compared to those in 897 primary lung tissues of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data.
Results: Twenty-four CpGs (p < 1.03E-07) were significantly methylated in bronchial washings from 70 NSCLC patients compared to those from 53 controls. The CpGs also had significant methylation in the TCGA cohort. The 123 participants were divided into a training set (N = 82) and a test set (N = 41) to build a classification model. Logistic regression model showed the best performance for classification of lung cancer in bronchial washing samples: the sensitivity and specificity of a marker panel consisting of seven CpGs in TFAP2A, TBX15, PHF11, TOX2, PRR15, PDGFRA, and HOXA11 genes were 87.0 and 83.3% in the test set, respectively. The area under the curve (AUC) was equal to 0.87 (95% confidence interval = 0.73-0.96, p < 0.001). Methylation levels of two CpGs in RUNX3 and MIR196A1 genes were inversely associated with duration of smoking cessation in the controls, but not in NSCLCs, after adjusting for pack-years of smoking.
Conclusions: The present study suggests that NSCLC may be detected by analyzing methylation changes of seven CpGs in bronchial washings. Furthermore, smoking cessation may lead to decreased DNA methylation in nonmalignant bronchial epithelial cells in a gene-specific manner.
Keywords: Bronchial washing; Epigenome; Hypermethylation; Lung cancer; Smoking.