Cancer Epigenetics: Shifting to More Deep Action

Abstract

Cancer is a large group of more 100 different diseases that can arise anywhere in the human body [1-3]. It involves uncontrolled cellular proliferation, with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body [4]. Cancer is considered the second common leading cause of death worldwide. This condition was responsible for about 9.6 million deaths in 2018, where about 1 in 6 deaths is due to cancer [5]. Cancer arises from accumulation of genetic mutations and/or epigenetic mutations [6,7]. Several genes are involved in the carcinogenesis process, and they are reported elsewhere. The most common causes of cancer are epimutations, where environmental pollutions are the main players [8,9]. Epigenetics is a kind of non-sequence dependent inheritance, where a change in the DNA methylation, histone modification, among others, might cause cancer to develop [10-12]. Different mechanisms are involved in epigenetic-mediated carcinogenesis, each of them was extensively studied during the last four decades [6]. Interestingly, newly developed epigenetic-based cancer therapies provide unique and validated approach to treat different types of cancers [13,14].