Emerging Regulatory Mechanisms of N-Methyladenosine Modification in Cancer Metastasis.

Cancer metastasis is the major cause of cancer-related deaths and accounts for poor therapeutic outcomes. A metastatic cascade is a series of complicated biological processes. N-methyladenosine (mA) is the most abundant and conserved epitranscriptomic modification in eukaryotic cells, which has great impacts on RNA production and metabolism, including RNA splicing, processing, degradation and translation. Accumulating evidence demonstrates that mA plays a critical role in regulating cancer metastasis. However, there is a lack of studies that review the recent advances of mA in cancer metastasis. Here, we systematically retrieved the functions and mechanisms of how the mA axis regulates metastasis, and especially summarized the organ-specific liver, lung and brain metastasis mediated by mA in various cancers. Moreover, we discussed the potential application of mA modification in cancer diagnosis and therapy, as well as the present limitations and future perspectives of mA in cancer metastasis. This review provides a comprehensive knowledge on the mA-mediated regulation of gene expression, which is helpful to extensively understand the complexity of cancer metastasis from a new epitranscriptomic point of view and shed light on the developing novel strategies to anti-metastasis based on mA alteration.