Obesity and particularly central obesity are the main risk factors of colon cancer. All intestinal cell populations including stem cells, their progenitors and differentiated colonocytes seem to be the origin of colorectal cancer. However, recent data support the role of differentiated cells as cancer origin especially during inflammation. Based on Yamanaka's seminal work, re-expression of few transcription factors in terminally differentiated cells creates stemness properti'es. Although these transcription factors are involved in tumorigenesis, they are epigenetically repressed in adult tissues. We proposed that obesity might regulate methylation of stemness genes in colonocytes via inflammatory signalling. Obesity-associated inflammation was analysed using Western blot analysis of phospho-IκB (inhibitor of NF-κB). Methylation-sensitive high-resolution melting analysis was performed on colonic mucosal samples of twenty obese and twenty normal-weight men to analyse promoter methylation of POU5F1 (OCT4), NANOG, MYC and CDKN2A. TNF-treated HT-29 cells were used to recapitulate the effect of NF-κB activation on stemness genes methylation. Our results showed that colonic phosphorylation of IκB, as a signal of NF-κB activation, was higher in obese subjects compared with their normal-weight counterparts. Moreover, promoter methylation of NANOG was likely to be lower in obese subjects and correlated with central obesity. HT-29 cells incubated by TNF-α showed hypomethylation of POU5F1 and MYC genes in addition to the NANOG. These results suggest that obesity-induced inflammation might be involved in the regulation of DNA methylation of oncogenic genes such as NANOG in differentiated colonocytes and thus predispose them to later oncogenic alterations.
Keywords: DNA methylation; NF-κB; Obesity; Stemness genes; Ten-eleven translocation enzymes.