Division of Molecular and Translational Biomedicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
Division of Molecular and Translational Biomedicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
Semin Cancer Biol. 2022 Aug;83:384-398. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2021.01.003. Epub 2021 Jan 20.
Inflammation is an essential component of several respiratory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). It is central to lung cancer, the leading cancer in terms of associated mortality that has affected millions of individuals worldwide. Inflammation and pulmonary manifestations are also the major causes of COVID-19 related deaths. Acute hyperinflammation plays an important role in the COVID-19 disease progression and severity, and development of protective immunity against the virus is greatly sought. Further, the severity of COVID-19 is greatly enhanced in lung cancer patients, probably due to the genes such as ACE2, TMPRSS2, PAI-1 and furin that are commonly involved in cancer progression as well as SAR-CoV-2 infection. The importance of inflammation in pulmonary manifestations, cancer and COVID-19 calls for a closer look at the underlying processes, particularly the associated increase in IL-6 and other cytokines, the dysregulation of immune cells and the coagulation pathway. Towards this end, several reports have identified epigenetic regulation of inflammation at different levels. Expression of several key inflammation-related cytokines, chemokines and other genes is affected by methylation and acetylation while non-coding RNAs, including microRNAs as well as long non-coding RNAs, also affect the overall inflammatory responses. Select miRNAs can regulate inflammation in COVID-19 infection, lung cancer as well as other inflammatory lung diseases, and can serve as epigenetic links that can be therapeutically targeted. Furthermore, epigenetic changes also mediate the environmental factors-induced inflammation. Therefore, a better understanding of epigenetic regulation of inflammation can potentially help develop novel strategies to prevent, diagnose and treat chronic pulmonary diseases, lung cancer and COVID-19.
炎症是几种呼吸系统疾病的重要组成部分，如慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）、哮喘和急性呼吸窘迫综合征（ARDS）。它是肺癌的核心，肺癌是全球数百万人死亡的主要癌症。炎症和肺部表现也是与 COVID-19 相关死亡的主要原因。急性过度炎症在 COVID-19 疾病进展和严重程度中起重要作用，因此人们非常希望开发针对该病毒的保护性免疫。此外，肺癌患者的 COVID-19 严重程度大大增加，这可能是由于 ACE2、TMPRSS2、PAI-1 和 furin 等基因共同参与癌症进展和 SARS-CoV-2 感染。炎症在肺部表现、癌症和 COVID-19 中的重要性要求我们更仔细地研究潜在的过程，特别是与 IL-6 和其他细胞因子的相关增加、免疫细胞和凝血途径的失调有关。为此，有几项报告已经确定了炎症在不同水平上的表观遗传调控。几种关键炎症相关细胞因子、趋化因子和其他基因的表达受甲基化和乙酰化的影响，而非编码 RNA，包括 microRNAs 和长非编码 RNA，也会影响整体炎症反应。一些特定的 microRNAs 可以调节 COVID-19 感染、肺癌以及其他炎症性肺部疾病中的炎症，并且可以作为可治疗靶向的表观遗传联系。此外，表观遗传变化也介导了环境因素诱导的炎症。因此，更好地理解炎症的表观遗传调控可能有助于开发预防、诊断和治疗慢性肺部疾病、肺癌和 COVID-19 的新策略。
