Wang Xi, Kuang Ye-Ye, Hu Xiao-Tong
Xi Wang, Ye-Ye Kuang, Xiao-Tong Hu, Biomedical Research Center, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University and Key Laboratory of Biotherapy of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou 310016, Zhejiang Province, China.
World J Gastroenterol. 2014 Apr 21;20(15):4276-87. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v20.i15.4276.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) causes approximately 600000 deaths annually and is the third leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Despite significant advancements in treatment options, CRC patient survival is still poor owing to a lack of effective tools for early diagnosis and a limited capacity for optimal therapeutic decision making. Since there exists a need to find new biomarkers to improve diagnosis of CRC, the research on epigenetic biomarkers for molecular diagnostics encourages the translation of this field from the bench to clinical practice. Epigenetic alterations are thought to hold great promise as tumor biomarkers. In this review, we will primarily focus on recent advances in the study of epigenetic biomarkers for colorectal cancer and discuss epigenetic biomarkers, including DNA methylation, microRNA expression and histone modification, in cancer tissue, stool, plasma, serum, cell lines and xenografts. These studies have improved the chances that epigenetic biomarkers will find a place in the clinical practices of screening, early diagnosis, prognosis, therapy choice and recurrence surveillance for CRC patients. However, these studies have typically been small in size, and evaluation at a larger scale of well-controlled randomized clinical trials is the next step that is necessary to increase the quality of epigenetic biomarkers and ensure their widespread clinical use.
结直肠癌（CRC）每年导致约60万人死亡，是全球癌症死亡的第三大主要原因。尽管治疗选择有了显著进展，但由于缺乏有效的早期诊断工具以及优化治疗决策的能力有限，CRC患者的生存率仍然很低。由于需要寻找新的生物标志物来改善CRC的诊断，关于用于分子诊断的表观遗传生物标志物的研究促使该领域从实验室转化到临床实践。表观遗传改变被认为作为肿瘤生物标志物具有很大的前景。在这篇综述中，我们将主要关注结直肠癌表观遗传生物标志物研究的最新进展，并讨论癌症组织、粪便、血浆、血清、细胞系和异种移植物中的表观遗传生物标志物，包括DNA甲基化、微小RNA表达和组蛋白修饰。这些研究增加了表观遗传生物标志物在CRC患者筛查、早期诊断、预后、治疗选择和复发监测的临床实践中占有一席之地的可能性。然而，这些研究规模通常较小，下一步有必要在更大规模的严格控制的随机临床试验中进行评估，以提高表观遗传生物标志物的质量并确保其广泛的临床应用。
