Master’s project

Sofie Gawinski Lindholm, BSc

I am a master’s student in molecular medicine currently working on my master’s project. The aim of the study is to investigate whether the analysis of methylation patterns in cell free DNA (ctDNA) can be used as a biomarker for brain metastases in EGFR-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. I will perform a differential methylation analysis on different cell lines and human samples to identify hypermethylated regions of interest. I will study if the differentially methylated regions can be observed in cfDNA from EGFR-positive NSCLC patients and in lung cancer tissue from EGFR-positive NSCLC patients with the use of bisulfite sequencing. From these analyses, I will select the most differentially methylated regions as potential biomarkers. These regions will be validated by using droplet digital PCR on cfDNA from EGFR-positive NSCLC patients. The identified biomarkers will be further validated by a FRAGMA analysis on the patient samples.