Page 17 - SDIR5 Abstract book 21 12 2021.

ADVANCES IN SOLID TUMOR RESEARCH

Short talks

Targeted BS-seq methods for the study of epigenetic landscape in solid tumors and liquid
biopsies

1,2
Miljana Tanić
1 Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, Experimental Oncology Department, Belgrade, Serbia;
2 University College London, UCL Cancer Institute, London, United Kingdom;

DNA methylation is a key epigenetic modification in the regulation of cell fate and differentiation, and its
analysis is gaining increasing importance in both basic and clinical research. Targeted Bisulfite Sequencing
(TBS) has become the method of choice for the cost-effective, targeted analysis of the human methylome
at base-pair resolution. Several commercial platforms based on hybridization capture (HC) or reduced
representation bilufite sequencig (RRBS) are available. We performed a comprahensive benchmarking
study to identify advantages and limitations of available technologies. To study epigenetic landsacepe of
non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) within the TRACERx study we applied RRBS and developed new
bioinformatic tools for deconvolution of pure methylome and delineation of intratumoral heterogeneity.
This allowed us to discover a novel epigenetic mechanism of immune evasion in NSCLC. To detect cancer-
specific DNA methylation marks from cfDNA we are developing a novel method based for ultra-senstitve
capture and library prep. This method is being applied to monitor the acquision of resistance to systemic
therapy in NSCLC and CRC in a prospective longitudinal study at the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of
Serbia.

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