Hypermethylated GRIA4, a potential biomarker for an early non-invasive detection of metastasis of clinically known colorectal cancer

INTRODUCTION: Colorectal cancer (CRC) can develop through several dysregulated molecular pathways, including the serrated pathway, characterized by CpG island methylator (CIMP) phenotype. Although the tumor tissue is a commonly tested material, sample types such as stool or plasma, bring a new, non-invasive approach. Several cancer-related methylated genes have been identified in CRC patients, including gene GRIA4, showing promising diagnostic potential. The aim of our study was to develop a sensitive droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) assay to examine GRIA4 hypermethylation status in CRC patients and evaluate its diagnostic potential in tissue and liquid biopsy samples. METHODS: In total, 23 patients participated in this study, 7 patients with primary CRC and 16 patients with liver metastasis of clinically known CRC. We obtained tumor and non-tumor tissues (N=17), blood samples pre- and post-surgery (N=22), and blood of five volunteers without a personal cancer history. We have developed and optimized a ddPCR assay for GRIA4 hypermethylation detection, from tissue and plasma samples. RESULTS: We detected significantly increased GRIA4 methylation in tumor tissues compared to their adjacent non-tumor tissue, p<0.0001. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis defined cutoff values to separate primary tumors and metastases from non-tumor colon/rectum, specifically 36.85% for primary tumors and 34.81% for metastases. All primary tumors were above this threshold. When comparing the methylation levels of metastatic vs. non-tumor tissue, a smaller increase was observed in liver metastasis versus colon tissue (3.6× gain; p=0.001), then in liver metastasis versus adjacent liver tissue (17.4× gain; p<0.0001). On average, GRIA4 hypermethylation in primary tumor plasma was 2.8-fold higher (p=0.39), and in metastatic plasma, 16.4-fold higher (p=0.0011) compared to healthy individuals. Hypermethylation in metastatic plasma was on average 5.9 times higher (p=0.051) than in primary tumor plasma. After tumor removal surgery, average hypermethylation decrease in plasma was 1.6× for primary (p=0.037) and 4.5× for metastatic patients (p=0.023). DISCUSSION: Based on our data, it can be inferred that GRIA4 serves as a tissue specific biomarker for the colon/rectum tissue, thus is suitable for cancer classification. This biomarker showed the potential to be an attractive target for early non-invasive detection of metastases of clinically known CRC, although additional analysis has to be performed.