Patients with Barrett's esophagus (BE) have an increased risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma which is 40-125 fold higher than in the general population. However, the current techniques of detecting dysplasia and observing abnormal p53 immunohistochemical staining are not accurate or reliable methods for determining which BE patients will progress to cancer. DNA hypermethylation is an epigenetic process that occurs in the promoter region of certain genes, resulting in suppression of gene expression. Inactivation of specific genes via hypermethylation has been highly associated with cancer.