Abstract
Bladder cancer (BC) is the most common neoplasia of the urothelial tract. Due to its high incidence, prevalence, recurrence and mortality, it remains an unsolved clinical and social problem. The treatment of BC is challenging and, although immunotherapies have revealed potential benefit in a percentage of patients, it remains mostly an incurable disease at its advanced state. Epigenetic alterations, including aberrant DNA methylation, altered chromatin remodeling and deregulated expression of non-coding RNAs are common events in BC and can be driver events in BC pathogenesis. Accordingly, these epigenetic alterations are now being used as potential biomarkers for these disorders and are being envisioned as potential therapeutic targets for the future management of BC. In this review, we summarize the recent findings in these emerging and exciting new aspects paving the way for future clinical treatment of this disease.
Highlights
Bladder cancer (BC) is a common urogenital cancer which represents a current clinical and social problem
The aberrant epigenetic landscape is a hallmark of human cancer (Han et al, 2012; Mio et al, 2019; Zhao et al, 2019) and, in particular, characterizes BC as an epigenome disease, as studies of complete exome sequencing have shown that it presents frequent alterations in the genes that govern the organization of chromatin and histone modifications, either by mutation or by its expression/altered function (Gui et al, 2011; Weinstein et al, 2014)
HOX genes appear hypermethylated in almost all aggressive tumors (Reinert et al, 2011; Kandimalla et al, 2012), and HOXA9 promoter methylation correlated with higher recurrence, progression, and death by cancer in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) (Kitchen et al, 2015) and was associated with cisplatin resistance in BC cell lines (Xylinas et al, 2016)
Summary
BC is a common urogenital cancer which represents a current clinical and social problem. An extraordinary number of alterations in epigenetic machinery have been observed in BC, affecting DNA methylation (Marques-Magalhaes et al, 2018), chromatin organization, histone modifications (Weinstein et al, 2014; Robertson et al, 2018) and non-coding RNAs expression (Pop-Bica et al, 2017; Taheri et al, 2018) This has produced a large body of evidence indicating that epigenetic machinery could represent a putative target for BC management, a source of valuable biomarkers for diagnostic, prognostic and response prediction, and a novel research field with amazing new insights into the molecular mechanisms of cancer biology governing cell autonomous cancer processes as well as the intricate cross talk between cancer cells and their niche
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
