A computational analysis on methylation inhibition during intestinal cancer initiation

Epigenetics has emerged only recently as a fundamentally important area of biological and medical research that has implications for our understanding of human diseases including cancer, autoimmune and neuropsychiatric disorders. Here, we use a computational model developed for colon and small intestine crypt dynamics in order to investigate the effect of a set of potential methylation inhibitors with respect to methylation modifications in intestinal tissues during cancer initiation. Inhibitor effect was marked for abnormal crypt groups, with largest average methylation differences observed ≈0.75% in the colon and ≈0.79% in the small intestine lower when inhibitor was present (during relatively short time-periods of 90 days).