Identification of 5 novel genes methylated in breast and other epithelial cancers.

Background: There are several high throughput approaches to identify methylated genes in cancer. We utilized one such recently developed approach, MIRA (methylated-CpG island recovery assay) combined with CpG island arrays to identify novel genes that are epigenetically inactivated in breast cancer.

Results: Using this approach we identified numerous CpG islands that demonstrated aberrant DNA methylation in breast cancer cell lines.