Wu Cheng-Nan, Liang Shiu-Yun, Tsai Chia-Wen, Bau Da-Tian
Department of Terry Fox Cancer Research Lab, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC.
Recent Pat Anticancer Drug Discov. 2008 Nov;3(3):209-19. doi: 10.2174/157489208786242304.
In the past decades, the incidence of cancer keeps its rapid increasing step all over the world and cancer is always an important threat to public health. It is believed that cancer is resulted from a series of genetic alterations leading to progressive disorder of the normal mechanisms controlling cell proliferation, differentiation, death, and/or genomic stability. The response of the cell to genetic injury and its ability to maintain genomic stability by means of a variety of DNA repair mechanisms are therefore essential in preventing tumor initiation and progression. From the same viewpoint, the relative role of DNA repair as a biomarker for prognosis, predicator of drug and therapy responses, or indeed as target for novel gene therapy is recently patented and very promising. In this review, we have summarized the studies investigating the association between XRCC4, one of the NHEJ genes, and the susceptibility to multiple cancers, and discussed its role in carcinogenesis and application in anticancer drug discovery.
在过去几十年中，癌症发病率在全球范围内持续快速上升，癌症始终是对公众健康的重要威胁。人们认为癌症是由一系列基因改变导致的，这些改变致使控制细胞增殖、分化、死亡和/或基因组稳定性的正常机制出现渐进性紊乱。因此，细胞对基因损伤的反应及其通过多种DNA修复机制维持基因组稳定性的能力，对于预防肿瘤的发生和发展至关重要。从同样的角度来看，DNA修复作为预后生物标志物、药物和治疗反应预测指标，甚至作为新型基因治疗靶点的相对作用，近来已获得专利且前景广阔。在本综述中，我们总结了有关NHEJ基因之一XRCC4与多种癌症易感性之间关联的研究，并讨论了其在致癌过程中的作用以及在抗癌药物发现中的应用。
