Novel epigenetic biomarkers for hematopoietic cancer found in twins.
Signe Bedsted ClemmensenHenrik FrederiksenJonas Mengel-FromAino HeikkinenJaakko A KaprioJacob V B HjelmborgPublished in: Acta oncologica (Stockholm, Sweden) (2024)
We identified 67 epigenetic markers for hematopoietic malignancies of which 12 are linked to genes associated with hematologic malignancies. For some markers, we discovered a 2-3-fold relative risk difference for high versus low methylation. The identification of these 67 sites enabled the formation of a predictor demonstrating a cross-validated time-varying area under the curve (AUC) of 92% 3 years after individual blood sampling and persistent performance above 70% up to 6 years after blood sampling. This predictive performance was to a large extent recovered in the validation sample showing an overall Harrell's C of 73%. In conclusion, from a large population representative twin study on hematopoietic cancers, novel epigenetic markers were identified that may prove useful for early diagnosis.