DNA hypermethylation of tumor suppressor genes as an early lung cancer biomarker

Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer related deaths worldwide. It seems to be caused especially by lack of established molecular markers which could provide early and non-invasive diagnostics of developing tumor. Among studied markers the most promising are epigenetic alterations such as DNA hypermethylation. Recent studies demonstrated high utility of such markers especially as adjunct test for computed tomography (CT)/low-dose spiral computed tomography (LDSCT) tumor screening. Reduction of false results rate obtained by imaging diagnostics as well as possibility of application that markers as independent non-invasive tools for early lung cancer detection encourages to their further investigation.