“Once DNA methylation profiles are established at the precancerous stage, such patterns tend to be maintained and are inherited by cancers themselves. And so, we continue to study the application of DNA methylation as a biomarker for various purposes, such as diagnosing cancer risk, detecting and preventing cancer, and predicting how patients will respond to cancer treatment.”
Today, one disease Prof. Kanai believes should be the focus of diagnosing cancer risk is non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
“With NASH, fat accumulates in the liver over many years, and as inflammation continues, it leads to cirrhosis and eventually liver cancer. It is estimated that cirrhosis will progress to liver cancer in more than 10% of patients. Although NASH is on the rise as a metabolic disorder, many patients do not initially have symptoms and do not necessarily make regular visits to the hospital, even after being diagnosed. When confirming a NASH diagnosis, we perform a liver biopsy, the idea being to use a portion of the biopsy to measure whether the patient has the type of DNA methylation profile that would predispose them to cancer in the future. We believe that informing people of such risks will create opportunities for them to engage in treatment to stop NASH from progressing, and with clinicians also wanting access to this kind of data, we are continuing to develop tests for medical application.”
Prof. Kanai and her colleagues have been working to develop a method that is easy to implement and suitable for clinical specimens containing a mixture of different cell lineages. Now, through collaborations between industry and academia, they have succeeded in creating a diagnostic method using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
“We use samples left over from diagnostic liver biopsies, so there isn’t any extra burden on the patient. Using the HPLC method, we can obtain test results in about ten minutes. It is easy to implement the system at hospital laboratories, so we hope to promote a system where we can inform the patient on how best to prevent NASH, stop the disease from progressing, and, in doing so, avoid more people developing liver cancer.”