Can this technology reliably characterize heterogenous tissue samples?
Thanks to the sensitive and quantitative nature of real-time PCR, hypermethylated DNA can be detected even when the relevant cells are present at only five percent of a total population containing mostly normal stromal cells. This level of sensitivity equals bisulfite-sequencing and bisulfite-PCR methods. In contrast, Methylation-Specific PCR (MSP) detects sequences only when the normally inefficient bisulfite conversion is 100 percent successful, thus having the decreased sensitivity.
