While it is possible that our observation of increased CpG island methylation of HMGB2 in EOC cases is due to the methylation signature arising from circulating tumor cells (CTCs), this is unlikely as CTCs would be expected to comprise a small fraction of the total cells used in assessing DNAm [68], and thus contribute insignificantly to the overall methylation signatures analyzed. Here, HMGB2 is linked to neoplasm.