Zheng Jiehua, Lin Weixun, Tang Jing, Xu Bo
Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, No. 601, Huangpu Avenue, Guangzhou, 510632, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
Department of Thyroid and Breast Surgery, Shenzhen Second People's Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
Discov Oncol. 2025 May 27;16(1):936. doi: 10.1007/s12672-025-02765-z.
Epigenetic alteration leads to the aberrant transcriptional programmes that faciliate cancer onset and progression. In-depth understanding of the epigenetic alteration of cancers is critical for crucial in developing meaningful cancer treatment that may provide a meaningful improvement in overall survival. Based on the data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we performed a comprehensive and systematic genomic study of epigenetic genes. We defined the epigenetic score to reveal the functional roles of epigenetic genes. We found that epigenetic score was higher in tumors than in normal tissues in most cancers and was associated with poorer prognosis, especially in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Our study also found that epigenetic score is significantly related to immune evasion in HCC. To guide efficient pharmalogical intervention of unfolded protein response to help patients, we performed virtual screening and found some compounds targeting UHRF1 could become a good pharmaceutical therapeutic candidate in unique or adjuvant therapeutic approaches toward HCC.
表观遗传改变会导致异常的转录程序，从而促进癌症的发生和发展。深入了解癌症的表观遗传改变对于开发有意义的癌症治疗方法至关重要，这可能会显著提高总体生存率。基于癌症基因组图谱（TCGA）中的数据，我们对表观遗传基因进行了全面系统的基因组研究。我们定义了表观遗传评分以揭示表观遗传基因的功能作用。我们发现，在大多数癌症中，肿瘤的表观遗传评分高于正常组织，且与较差的预后相关，尤其是在肝细胞癌（HCC）中。我们的研究还发现，表观遗传评分与HCC中的免疫逃逸显著相关。为了指导对未折叠蛋白反应进行有效的药物干预以帮助患者，我们进行了虚拟筛选，发现一些靶向UHRF1的化合物可能成为针对HCC的独特或辅助治疗方法中的良好药物治疗候选物。
