Costa Ana Laura, Lobo João, Jerónimo Carmen, Henrique Rui
Cancer Biology & Epigenetics Group, Research Center of Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto (CI-IPOP), Porto, Portugal.
Department of Pathology, Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto (IPO Porto), Porto, Portugal.
Epigenomics. 2017 Feb;9(2):155-169. doi: 10.2217/epi-2016-0081. Epub 2017 Jan 18.
Testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) are a group of heterogeneous, biologically diverse and clinically challenging neoplasms. Despite the relatively low incidence and mortality rates, a subgroup of patients with disseminated disease relapse after conventional therapy and have a dismal prognosis. Moreover, TGCT afflict mostly young men and have therapeutic peculiarities, with some patients showing resistance to cisplatin-based treatments and others being troubled by irreversible side effects, such as infertility. Most TGCT share a common tumorigenic pathway and are cytogenetically similar, making room for Epigenetics to explain its heterogeneity at pathological and clinical level. In this review, we summarize the foremost epigenetic alterations among TGCT focusing on their clinical potential as diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers.
睾丸生殖细胞肿瘤（TGCT）是一组异质性、生物学特性多样且临床治疗颇具挑战的肿瘤。尽管其发病率和死亡率相对较低，但一部分播散性疾病患者在接受传统治疗后会复发，预后较差。此外，TGCT主要影响年轻男性，且具有治疗特殊性，一些患者对基于顺铂的治疗产生耐药性，另一些患者则受到不可逆副作用（如不育）的困扰。大多数TGCT具有共同的致瘤途径，细胞遗传学特征相似，这为表观遗传学在病理和临床水平解释其异质性提供了空间。在本综述中，我们总结了TGCT中最重要的表观遗传改变，重点关注它们作为诊断、预后和预测生物标志物的临床潜力。
