Introduction Maintaining research ethics within a university and monitoring the campus Institutional Review Board (IRB) are essential responsibilities not to be taken lightly. IRBs occasionally need to be reviewed to see that they, as well as researchers, are adhering to rules and regulations on ethics through their submission and review procedures. Since there are no established measures for assessing IRB quality, it is unclear how to determine whether IRBs are achieving their intended aims. This study used the feedback and input of campus members at a newly-established, private, non-profit university within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to evaluate their campus IRB. Methods Following the university’s IRB approval, and in close collaboration with the Saudi National Committee of Bioethics (NCBE), this cross-sectional study was conducted from February through May of 2019. Self-administered surveys were sent out via university emails to faculty and students at Alfaisal University in Riyadh of Saudi Arabia. The questions in the surveys included inquiries on participants’ demographics, their familiarity with campus IRB research ethics, their satisfaction with IRB procedures, the challenges encountered during the IRB submission and review process, the effectiveness of a recent IRB-coordinated research ethics campaign, and any suggestions for IRB improvement. Surveys were sent to faculty members and students at five colleges on campus. Results Of the campus members who were sent surveys, 8% responded (175). Of those who responded, 29.7% had submitted at least one research proposal for IRB review during the past three years (2016-2019), and more than half of this group were satisfied with the IRB submission and review procedures. For those who had submitted at least one research proposal, respondents reported the more usual challenges that researchers tend to encounter, such as time-consuming and tedious IRB review processes and ambiguous IRB guidelines and regulations. The less typical IRB challenges that were reported, and that are unique to academia, include the IRB tendency to deny undergraduate student requests to serve as principal investigators of their research projects. Concerning IRB efforts to educate and train campus members on research ethics, only 26.3% of the participants were aware of the recently performed research ethics campaign, and 7.6% of the participants attended the end-of-campaign workshop. Of those who attended the workshop, 76.9% reported that the campaign and workshop effectively met their expectations. Conclusions This study revealed several issues encountered by university faculty and students seeking campus IRB approval for their research projects. The main academia-specific challenge was over whether undergraduate students could serve as PIs for research projects, and a universal one was that they find the IRB process to be very time-consuming and tedious, which is a situation that has already been relayed in several other articles on IRB issues. About two-thirds of respondents reported a lack of familiarity with the topic of research ethics. This challenge makes it clear that information on research ethics is not effectively reaching enough campus members in the busy environment of academia.

DNA methylation acts as a major epigenetic modification in mammals, characterized by the transfer of a methyl group to a cytosine. DNA methylation plays a pivotal role in regulating normal development, and misregulation in cells leads to an abnormal phenotype as is seen in several cancers. Any mutations or expression anomalies of genes encoding regulators of DNA methylation may lead to abnormal expression of critical molecules. A comprehensive genomic study encompassing all the genes related to DNA methylation regulation in relation to breast cancer is lacking. We used genomic and transcriptomic datasets from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TGCA) Pan-Cancer Atlas, Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) and microarray platforms and conducted in silico analysis of all the genes related to DNA methylation with respect to writing, reading and erasing this epigenetic mark. Analysis of mutations was conducted using cBioportal, while Xena and KMPlot were utilized for expression changes and patient survival, respectively. Our study identified multiple mutations in the genes encoding regulators of DNA methylation. The expression profiling of these showed significant differences between normal and disease tissues. Moreover, deregulated expression of some of the genes, namely DNMT3B, MBD1, MBD6, BAZ2B, ZBTB38, KLF4, TET2 and TDG, was correlated with patient prognosis. The current study, to our best knowledge, is the first to provide a comprehensive molecular and genetic profile of DNA methylation machinery genes in breast cancer and identifies DNA methylation machinery as an important determinant of the disease progression. The findings of this study will advance our understanding of the etiology of the disease and may serve to identify alternative targets for novel therapeutic strategies in cancer.