Many recurrent genes were known tumour suppressors with previously described cancer-related promoter hypermethylation anomalies (PTPN13, DUSP5, [2] PPP1R14A [26], PPP1R3C [27], PTPRM [28] and IGFBP3 [46–48] validating the robustness of our approach. Here, PTPRM is linked to cancer.