Investigation of the expression of the ALX3 gene and the metilation level of the promotor region in lung cancer cell lines

Some studies in recent years have shown that some genes may be biomarkers in various cancers. Accordingly, although it has been shown in genome-wide scans that ALX genes show methylation differences compared to normal tissues and may be one of these biomarkers, the number of studies especially on the ALX3 gene is very few. However, even in these few studies, differences in the methylation profile of the ALX3 gene differed in some cancers compared to normal tissues. However, no relationship was found between the ALX3 gene and lung cancer in the literature. In this regard, in this study, it was aimed to examine the relationship between the ALX3 gene and lung cancer in terms of gene expression and methylation profiles and to find out whether this gene can be a biomarker in the pathogenesis of lung cancer. For this purpose, A549 and H1299 lung cancer cell lines and Beas-2B normal lung tissue cell lines were used in vitro in this thesis study. COBRA method was used for methylation analysis and Real-Time PCR method was used for gene expression analysis. As a result, lung cancer cell lines showed significant hypermethylation compared to normal lung tissue cell lines, and no significant difference was found in gene expressions. According to the results, ALX3 gene has the potential to be a biomarker since it exhibits a prominent hypermethylation pattern in lung cancer. In addition to these in vitro analysis, it is thought that performing the same studies on patient samples in vivo may help to confirm this potential. In the light of all these results, the ALX3 gene is a potential biomarker for lung cancer and forms the basis for studies to develop a biotechnological drug that will reverse the hypermethylation of this gene.