Multiple cytosine guanine dinucleotides (CpG island) are found in the VIM promoter region. The levels of VIM pro-moter methylation and VIM gene expression were investi-gated in 7 cervical cancer cell lines and 50 human tissue samples with a distinctive degree of malignant trans-for-mation. While multiple CpG sites in the VIM promoter were highly methylated in CIN III and invasive carcinoma cells, they were rarely methylated in normal cells. Our result shows that methylation in the VIM promoter appears to start from CIN I and CIN II, relatively early stages of multi-step carcinogenesis. This epigenetic alteration in VIM promoter suggests the availability as a biomarker for the early diagnosis and prevention of cervical cancer. We also show that hypermethylation in the VIM promoter is re-sponsible for transcriptional silencing of the VIM gene in cervical cancer cells. In addition, our result shows that exogenous overexpression of the VIM gene in SiHa cer-vical cancer cells slightly activated cell proliferation and migration as shown in soft agar colony formation and migration assays.

Keywords: cervical cancer, epigenetic gene regulation, methylation biomarker, VIM