Development of New Screening Process of Chemcial Modifications in DNA

A new process called methylation has been developed at the Medical school in Baltimore. It actually helps discovering chemical modifications to DNA. This discovery could help in early cancer diagnosis.

What methylation actually makes possible is switching on/off the healthy genes which cause cancer, without damaging the DNA. It’s all done with improved PCR – the DNA parts are being copied millions of time within a small amount of time, sensitively and not too expensive.

“The detection of DNA methylation is very important, because it’s been demonstrated that a large number of tumor suppressor genes become deactivated by using DNA methylation.” said Mr. Bailey, one of the researchers. “Our process of methylation screening provides an easy, inexpensive and valuable tool for the early diagnosis of cancer and monitoring tumor behavior.”