Genome-wide methylation analyses identifies Non-coding RNA genes dysregulated in breast tumours that metastasise to the brain.

Brain metastases comprise 40% of all metastatic tumours and breast tumours are among the tumours that most commonly metastasise to the brain, the role that epigenetic gene dysregulation plays in this process is not well understood. We carried out 450 K methylation array analysis to investigate epigenetically dysregulated genes in breast to brain metastases (BBM) compared to normal breast tissues (BN) and primary breast tumours (BP). For this, we referenced 450 K methylation data for BBM tumours prepared in our laboratory with BN and BP from The Cancer Genome Atlas.