The new publication, which has been produced in collaboration between the eilslabs and labs of Christoph Plass (DKFZ) and Raffaella Santoro (University of Zurich), describes that BAZ2A is an epigenetic regulator, which is overexpressed in malignant prostate cancer and it is involved in the epigenetic silencing of genes repressed during metastasis. The published work was part of the PhD thesis of Lei Gu, who shares first authorship with Sandra Frommel from Zurich, Christopher C. Oakes from the Plass lab and Ronald Simon from the group of Guido Sauter. The results are part of the ICGC project on early-onset prostate cancer.

A heat map of the DNA methylation values of the 3,000 most variable CpG sites from 450K array analysis, shows, that epigenetic remodeling occurs in prostate tumors overexpressing BAZ2A. Source: Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Gu et al. (2014) Nature Genetics doi: 10.1038/ng.3165

Further Reading:

• Publication: Gu, L.*, Frommel, S.C.*, Oakes, C.C.*, Simon, R.*, Grupp, K., Gerig, C.Y., Bar, D., Robinson, M.D., Baer, C., Weiss, M., Gu, Z., Schapira, M., Kuner, R., Sultmann, H., Provenzano, M., Cancer, I.P.o.E.O.P., Yaspo, M.-L., Brors, B., Korbel, J., Schlomm, T., Sauter^@, G., Eils, R.^@, Plass, C.^@, & Santoro, R.^@ (2014). BAZ2A (TIP5) is involved in epigenetic alterations in prostate cancer and its overexpression predicts disease recurrence. Nature Genetics, 47,  22–30 (2015). doi: 10.1038/ng.3165
• DKFZ Press Release
• News on a previous publication from the ICGC EOPC consortium