Contribution of Vitamin D and Calcium-Sensing Receptors Methylation to the Risk of Colorectal Cancer in Saudi Patients

Aim: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide. It results from an interaction between genetic and epigenetic alterations with micronutrients. Vitamin D, via the vitamin D receptor (VDR) and calcium sensing receptor (CaSR), stimulates several hallmarks of cancer. This study aimed to measure the methylation status of VDR and CaSR in CRC patients and correlate them with other clinicopathological parameters to identify their role as diagnostic biomarkers.Material and Methods: The study was performed on 108 participants (CRC patients and controls). RT-PCR was used to measure the expression of VDR and CaSR mRNAs, whereas pyrosequencing was used to identify the methylation status of the promoter using DNA samples. Results: The expression results showed that neither VDR expression nor CaSR expression had a significant correlation with CRC risk. However, the promoters of VDR and CaSR were highly hypomethylated in CRC patients (the fold change was-7.09 for VDR and-4 for CaSR).Discussion: Although VDR and CaSR had a strong correlation with cancers, the results showed that they might not be promising diagnostic markers for CRC. However, more experiments on larger sample size are needed to elucidate the correlation between promoter methylation modification and CRC carcinogenesis.