Hypermethylation of SNAP91as an alternative mechanism of epidermal growth factor signalling dysregulation: a genome-wide meta-analysis with validation of colorectal cancers

Previous whole genome methylation studies have examined homogeneous populations of tumours with biases inherent to manufacturer-specific array-based technologies. Subtle changes in pathways and genes can be lost because of these technologies and because of study-based noise artefacts. Meta-analysis of these datasets might reduce this heterogeneity and reveal novel insights. We aimed to carry out a meta-analysis of all publicly available genome-wide methylation array (GWMA) datasets in colorectal cancer.