DNA methylation patterns may be used as innovative
biomarkers for some
pathologies including
cancer. They show a great accessibility due to their stability and presence in
body fluids. In addition, these
epigenetic modifications may be used as
prognosis markers or
therapeutic targets. Concretely, in
colorectal cancer (CRC), the third most common
cancer in the world in both
men and
women, a continuous genetic and
epigenetic alteration occurs during neoplastic transformation in colonic
epithelial cells. This accumulation of alterations leads to the transformation of normal colonic
epithelial cells to
adenocarcinomas, and these genetic alterations are promoted by aberrant
methylation of
promoter regions and subsequent
gene silencing. Many of these
genes have been reported to be methylated in the
tissue,
plasma and stool of CRC
patients, suggesting that they may have great potential to be used as
biomarkers for the early
detection of CRC. The aim of this study is to
review changes in the
methylation pattern of the
genes that can be used as novel diagnostic and prognostic
biomarkers of CRC