Nasopharyngeal carcinoma super-enhancer–driven ETV6 correlates with prognosis

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1705236114
• Publication Date: 2017-08-23T00:35:14Z
• Authors: Liangru Ke; Hufeng Zhou; Chong Wang; Geng Xiong; Yanqun Xiang; Yihong Ling; Abdelmajid Khabir; George S. Tsao; Yixin Zeng; Musheng Zeng; Pierre Busson; Elliott Kieff; Xiang Guo; Bo Zhao
• Keywords: Adult; Male; 0301 basic medicine; Epstein-Barr Virus Infections; Adolescent; Carcinoma; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Cell Cycle Proteins; Azepines; Genome, Viral; Immunohistochemistry; Epigenesis, Genetic; 3. Good health; Histone Code; Mice; 03 medical and health sciences; Enhancer Elements, Genetic; Cell Line, Tumor; Animals; Heterografts; Humans; Female; Aged

Significance Epigenetic alterations in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) are very frequent at the DNA level. Histone modifications are frequently altered in cancers. Because histone modifications are reversible, histone-modifying enzymes or other epigenetic regulators are ideal therapeutic targets, and drugs targeting these enzymes have been proven effective in cancer treatment. Understanding the NPC histone code provides unique insights into NPC pathogenesis and will likely contribute to the identification of unique therapeutics. Using genome-wide analyses of histone modifications, we generated an NPC epigenetic landscape and identified a key oncogene whose expression correlated with patient overall survival, suggesting that epigenetic profiling can effectively identify key oncogenic pathways. These studies provide proof-of-concept strategies for further characterization of the NPC epigenome on a larger scale.