Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 May 14;28(19):2046-50.
doi: 10.1038/onc.2009.62. Epub 2009 Apr 13.

DNA methylation inhibits p53-mediated survivin repression

N H Nabilsi  1 , R R Broaddus, D S Loose
Affiliations

DNA methylation inhibits p53-mediated survivin repression

N H Nabilsi et al. Oncogene. .

Abstract

The molecular progression of endometrial cancer is poorly understood, and both genetic and epigenetic factors play a role. Survivin is a member of the inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) gene family and contains a canonical CpG island that has been described as epigenetically regulated. As survivin is overexpressed in endometrial tumors, we hypothesized that hypomethylation could explain this expression pattern. Surprisingly, methylation-specific PCR and pyrosequencing showed that survivin was hypermethylated in endometrial tumors and correlated with increased survivin expression. We speculated that methylation could inhibit the binding of p53, a repressor of survivin expression. Our data indicates that demethylation of the survivin promoter by decitabine results in p53-dependent survivin repression and that p53 binding can be inhibited by DNA methylation. We are the first to report survivin de-repression by DNA methylation. We also present microarray data, which suggest that de-repression by methylation is a general mechanism of p53 regulation. Demethylation induced by decitabine is traditionally thought to be active in tumors by allowing the re-expression of tumor suppressor genes. However, our results indicate that an additional important mechanism is to decrease the expression of oncogenes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

MeSH terms