Epigenetic Changes in Cancer
- 1 February 2009
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Annual Reviews in Annual review of pathology
- Vol. 4 (1), 229-249
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.pathol.3.121806.151442
Abstract
Cancer is as much an epigenetic disease as it is a genetic disease, and epigenetic alterations in cancer often serve as potent surrogates for genetic mutations. Normal epigenetic modifications of DNA encompass three types of changes: chromatin modifications, DNA methylation, and genomic imprinting, each of which is altered in cancer cells. This review addresses the various epigenetic modifications that are pervasive among human tumors and traces the history of cancer epigenetics from the first observations of altered global methylation content to the recently proposed epigenetic progenitor model, which provides a common unifying mechanism for cancer development.Keywords
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