Hepatocellular carcinoma detection via targeted enzymatic methyl sequencing of plasma cell-free DNA

BACKGROUND: Epigenetic variants carried by circulating tumor DNA can be used as biomarkers for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by noninvasive liquid biopsy. However, traditional methylation analysis method, bisulfite sequencing, with disadvantages of severe DNA damage, is limited in application of low-amount cfDNA analysis. RESULTS: Through mild enzyme-mediated conversion, enzymatic methyl sequencing (EM-seq) is ideal for precise determination of cell-free DNA methylation and provides an opportunity for HCC early detection. EM-seq of methylation control DNA showed that enzymatic conversion of unmethylated C to U was more efficient than bisulfite conversion. Moreover, a relatively large proportion of incomplete converted EM-seq reads contains more than 3 unconverted CH site (CH = CC, CT or CA), which can be removed by filtering to improve accuracy of methylation detection by EM-seq. A cohort of 241 HCC, 76 liver disease, and 279 normal plasma samples were analyzed for methylation value on 1595 CpGs using EM-seq and targeted capture. Model training identified 283 CpGs with significant differences in methylation levels between HCC and non-HCC samples. A HCC screening model based on these markers can efficiently distinguish HCC sample from non-HCC samples, with area under the curve of 0.957 (sensitivity = 90%, specificity = 97%) in the test set, performing well in different stages as well as in serum α-fetoprotein/protein induced by vitamin K absence-II negative samples. CONCLUSION: Filtering of reads with ≥ 3 CHs derived from incomplete conversion can significantly reduce the noise of EM-seq detection. Based on targeted EM-seq analysis of plasma cell-free DNA, our HCC screening model can efficiently distinguish HCC patients from non-HCC individuals with high sensitivity and specificity. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13148-022-01420-6.