Abstract
Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of death from gynecologic tumors, however epigenetic events underlying this transformation are poorly understood. Promoter methylation status of tumor suppressor genes may be associated with transcriptional silencing and tumor progression.
It has been shown that methylation located in the promoter region of p53 is associated with low expression of this gene. The aim of this study was to investigate promoter methylation of p53 gene in ovarian cancer by comparison with normal ovarian tissue.
We used methylation-specific PCR to compare the methylation status of p53 promoter of 66 tissue samples of ovarian cancer with 37 control samples. In our study methylation specific PCR revealed p53 promoter methylation in 34 of 66 (51.5 %) of specimens with ovarian cancer.
These results indicate that methylation in p53 promoter region may play an important role in carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer.