SPARC and cancer: In this study, we proceeded to examine the methylation status of the SPARC promoter, as aberrant methylation is commonly observed in colorectal cancers (Toyota et al, 1999; Lee et al, 2004), and recent studies in other cancers have revealed aberrant hypermethylation of the SPARC promoter to be responsible for low levels of SPARC expression (Sato et al, 2003; Suzuki et al, 2005; DiMartino et al, 2006).