TGFβR2 aberrant methylation is a potential prognostic marker and therapeutic target in multiple myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable hematological malignancy. Different studies demonstrated the occurrence of genetic and epigenetic alterations in MM. The aberrant methylation is one of the most frequent epigenetic alterations in human genome. This study evaluated the aberrant methylation status of 20 genes in 51 MM samples by quantitative methylation‐specific PCR (QMSP) and compared the methylation profile with clinicopathological characteristics of the patients. The QMSP analyses showed that PTGS2 (100.0%), SFN (100.0%), CDKN2B (90.2%), CDH1 (88.2%), ESR1 (72.5%), HIC1 (70.5%), CCND2 (62.7%), DCC (45.1%) and TGFβR2 (39.2%) are frequently hypermethylated in MM while aberrant methylation of RARβ (16.6%), MGMT (12.5%), AIM1 (12.5%), CDKN2A (8.3%), SOCS1 (8.3%), CCNA1 (8.3%) and THBS1 (4.1%) are rare events. There was no methylation of GSTP1, MINT31, p14ARF and RB1 in the samples tested. Hypermethylation of ESR1 was correlated positively with isotype IgA, while aberrant methylation of THBS1 correlated negatively with isotype IgG. Furthermore, hypermethylation of DCC and TGFβR2 were correlated with poor survival. The multivariate analysis showed ISS and TGFβR2 hypermethylation strongly correlated with poor outcome. This study represents the first quantitative evaluation of promoter methylation in MM and our data provide evidence that TGFβR2 hypermethylation, besides ISS, may be useful as prognostic indicator in this disease. © 2009 UICC