42^nd World Cancer Conference

Cancer Epigenomics

Cancer epigenetics is the study of epigenetic modifications to the genome of cancer cells that do not involve a change in the nucleotide sequence. Epigenetic alterations are as important as genetic mutations behind the transition of a cell from normal to cancerous, and their manipulation holds great promise for cancer prevention, detection and therapy. In different types of cancer, a variety of epigenetic mechanisms can be perturbed, such as silencing of tumor suppressor genes and activation of oncogenes by altered CpG island methylation patterns, histone modifications and dysregulation of DNA binding proteins.