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Review
. 2023 Jan 10:13:1087479.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2022.1087479. eCollection 2022.

Epigenetic modifications in esophageal cancer: An evolving biomarker

Wen-Jian Liu  1 , Yuan Zhao  1 , Xu Chen  2 , Man-Li Miao  2 , Ren-Quan Zhang  1
Affiliations
Review

Epigenetic modifications in esophageal cancer: An evolving biomarker

Wen-Jian Liu et al. Front Genet. .

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is a widespread cancer of the digestive system that has two main subtypes: esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA). In the diverse range of cancer therapy schemes, the side effects of conventional treatments remain an urgent challenge to be addressed. Therefore, the pursuit of novel drugs with multiple targets, good efficacy, low side effects, and low cost has become a hot research topic in anticancer therapy. Based on this, epigenetics offers an attractive target for the treatment of esophageal cancer, where major mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modifications, non-coding RNA regulation, chromatin remodelling and nucleosome localization offer new opportunities for the prevention and treatment of esophageal cancer. Recently, research on epigenetics has remained at a high level of enthusiasm, focusing mainly on translating the basic research into the clinical setting and transforming epigenetic alterations into targets for cancer screening and detection in the clinic. With the increasing emergence of tumour epigenetic markers and antitumor epigenetic drugs, there are also more possibilities for anti-esophageal cancer treatment. This paper focuses on esophageal cancer and epigenetic modifications, with the aim of unravelling the close link between them to facilitate precise and personalized treatment of esophageal cancer.

Keywords: DNA methylation; anti-cancer therapy; biomarker; epigenetic modifications; esophageal cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Some of the epigenetic modifications involved in esophageal carcinoma, including DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNA regulation. Of these, Me stands for methylation, and Ac stands for acetylation.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Esophageal cancer regulates cancer-related pathways through different epigenetic modifications.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Esophageal Carcinoma being a cancer with poor prognosis, the addition of epigenetic mechanisms facilitates the early diagnosis, prognostic evaluation and therapeutic drug development aspects of the tumor.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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