Epigenetics and Disease Pharmaceutical Opportunities [Paperback]

Epigenetics has emerged recently as an important area of molecular biological studies. Epigenetic modifications lead to potentially heritable but reversible alterations in the expression of genes that determine cell fate. Epigenetic misregulation is thus often linked to degenerative diseases, cancer and neuronal disorders.Recent biomedical interest in this regulatory system stems from the fact that epigenetic, in contrast to genetic, alterations are in principle amenable to pharmacological intervention. A few epigenetically active drugs, for example histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) and DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) inhibitors, have been approved by FDA for treatment of cancers such as CTCL, MDS, and AML.This volume explores the scientific background for clinical applications of epigenetically active drugs. Included are descriptions of epigenetic controls over gene expression, the post-transcriptional silencing of genes by RNA interference (RNAi) and microRNAs, as well as new findings from stem cell research which are relevant to pharmacological applications.

Epigentic alterations, unlike genetic, are, in principle, amenable to pharmacological intervention, and a few of those drugs are currently undergoing clinical trial. This volume highlights the results of those studies.

1 DNA Methylation and CancerPhillippa C. Taberlay and Peter A. Jones2 Genome-wide Epigenetic Modifications in CancerYoon Jung Park, Rainer Claus, Dieter Weichenhan and Christoph Plass3 DNA Repair and the Control of DNA MethylationPrimo Sch?r and Olivier Fritsch4 Errors in Erasure: Links Between Histone lysine Methylation Removal and DiseaseElizabeth M. Duncan and C. David Allis5 Histone Modifications in Cancer Biology and PrognosisSiavash K. Kurdistani6 Dynamics of Histone Lysine Methylation: Structures of Methyl Writers and EraserAnup K. Upadhyay and Xiaodong Cheng7 Epigenetic Mechanisms of Mental RetardationAnne Schaefer, Alexander Tarakhovsky and Paul Greengard8 Histone alc1