Liu WB, et al. - Researchers investigated the role of TMEM196 gene hypermethylation and downregulation as biomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis in lung cancer. They analyzed samples and found the presence of TMEM196 gene hypermethylation in 68.1% of lung cancer tissues, 52.8% of plasma and 55.2% of sputum samples. They noted TMEM196 gene unmethylation (0/50) in normal tissues. Findings revealed a significant correlation of TMEM196 methylation in plasma and sputum samples, with that in the corresponding paired tumor tissues. The factors that were significantly related to TMEM196 aberrant methylation in cancer tissues, plasma and sputum DNA were age and pathological type. TMEM196 high methylation strongly differentiated lung cancer patients (AUC = 0.905) from normal subjects. A significantly poorer survival was observed among patients with TMEM196 high methylation vs those with low level from The Cancer Genome Atlas. TMEM196 methylation was identified as an independent prognostic marker in lung cancer. A significantly poorer overall survival was seen in patients with low TMEM196 expression vs TMEM196-high patients.