Original Article

p73 Methylation in Extranodal NK/T Cell Lympoma

Min-Sun Cho
Author Information & Copyright
Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Korea.

Copyright ⓒ 2005. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Sep 30, 2005

Abstract

Objectives

DNA methylation of promoter-associated CpG islands is an epigenetic modification of DNA associanted with gene silencing. p73 is a member of the p 53 family which is a tumor suppressor gene producing apoptosis and cell cycel arrest. We investigated the methylation pattern of p73 on the cases diagnosed at Ewha university hospital between 1993-2002.

Material and Methods

Sixteen cases of NK/T cell lymphomas and 7 cases of normal controls, which were 2 cases of peripheral blood mononuclear cells and 5 cases of nasal mucosal tissue were studied. Methylation-speific PCR for p73 were done.

Results

All cases of NK/T cell lymphomas except one(93.8%) showed hypermethylation of p73. Six cases among 7 normal control cases(14.2%) revealed unmethylated p73.

Conclusion

This results suggested that inactivation of p73 could be associated with tumorigenesis of NK cells.

Keywords: p73; NK/T cell lymphoma; Extranodal