ArticleOncotarget2016
A cancer specific hypermethylation signature of the TERT promoter predicts biochemical relapse in prostate cancer: a retrospective cohort study.
Article in Oncotarget, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- Epigenetic alterations in head and neck cancer: a brief update.Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2026Review
- THOR methylation as a pan-cancer mechanism ofFrontiers in oncology · 2026Review
- Balancing Early Detection and Overtreatment in Prostate Cancer: The Emerging Role of EpihTERT.Cancers · 2025Article
- The Years 2015-2025 as a Prospective Decade for the Identification of Specific Methylation Biomarkers of Prostate Cancer.Biomolecules · 2025Review
- Methylation Status of the Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase Promoter in Parotid Tumours and Adjacent Parotid Gland Tissue: A Pilot Study on the Implications for Recurrence and Development of Malignancy.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2025Article
- Telomeres and telomerase in mesothelioma: Pathophysiology, biomarkers and emerging therapeutic strategies (Review).International journal of oncology · 2025Review
- TERT upstream promoter methylation regulates TERT expression and acts as a therapeutic target in TERT promoter mutation-negative thyroid cancer.Cancer cell international · 2024Article
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- Role of telomere length in human carcinogenesis (Review).International journal of oncology · 2023Review
- Prognostic value and immune landscapes of TERT promoter methylation in triple negative breast cancer.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- THOR is a targetable epigenetic biomarker with clinical implications in breast cancer.Clinical epigenetics · 2022Article
- New Insights into Melanoma Tumor Syndromes.JID innovations : skin science from molecules to population health · 2022Review
- Differential DNA Methylation of THOR andCancers · 2022Article
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- Exploring hTERT promoter methylation in cutaneous T-cell lymphomas.Molecular oncology · 2022Article
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- Sirtuins and Sepsis: Cross Talk between Redox and Epigenetic Pathways.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Dual role of allele-specific DNA hypermethylation within the TERT promoter in cancer.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2021Article
- Intron 4-5 hTERT DNA Hypermethylation in Merkel Cell Carcinoma: Frequency, Association with Other Clinico-pathological Features and Prognostic Relevance.Endocrine pathology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
23 authors at 9 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The identification of new biomarkers to differentiate between indolent and aggressive prostate tumors is an important unmet need. We examined the role of THOR (TERT Hypermethylated Oncological Region) as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in prostate cancer (PCa).We analyzed THOR in common cancers using genome-wide methylation arrays. Methylation status of the whole TERT gene in benign and malignant prostate samples was determined by MeDIP-Seq. The prognostic role of THOR in PCa was assessed by pyrosequencing on discovery and validation cohorts from patients who underwent radical prostatectomy with long-term follow-up data.Most cancers (n = 3056) including PCa (n = 300) exhibited hypermethylation of THOR. THOR was the only region within the TERT gene that is differentially methylated between normal and malignant prostate tissue (p < 0.0001). Also, THOR was significantly hypermethylated in PCa when compared to paired benign tissues (n = 164, p < 0.0001). THOR hypermethylation correlated with Gleason scores and was associated with tumor invasiveness (p = 0.0147). Five years biochemical progression free survival (BPFS) for PCa patients in the discovery cohort was 87% (95% CI 73-100) and 65% (95% CI 52-78) for THOR non-hypermethylated and hypermethylated cancers respectively (p = 0.01). Similar differences in BPFS were noted in the validation cohort (p = 0.03). Importantly, THOR was able to predict outcome in the challenging (Gleason 6 and 7 (3 + 4)) PCa (p = 0.007). For this group, THOR was an independent risk factor for BPFS with a hazard-ratio of 3.685 (p = 0.0247). Finally, THOR hypermethylation more than doubled the risk of recurrence across all PSA levels (OR 2.5, p = 0.02).
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.