A growing relationship between genomic imprinting and tumorigenesis.

The association between aberrations of the human genome and the development of cancer is well established. Gene imprinting, defined as gene expression based on the gamete of origin, has previously been shown to be involved in this process by the loss of tumor suppressor gene regulation. We suggest that the activation of imprinted proto-oncogenes and growth factors may also play a vital role in tumorigenesis. Mechanistically, this can occur when the gene is removed from its imprinted sequence area, thus escaping repression. Synteny between the human and mouse genome provides the opportunity for targeted studies of imprinted genes suspected to be involved in cancer.