5-Methylcytosine and 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Signatures Underlying Pediatric Cancers

Shalu Jhanwar; Ajinkya Deogade

doi:10.3390/epigenomes3020009

5-Methylcytosine and 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Signatures Underlying Pediatric Cancers

Epigenomes. 2019 May 9;3(2):9. doi: 10.3390/epigenomes3020009.

Authors

Shalu Jhanwar^{1

2}, Ajinkya Deogade^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Developmental Genetics, Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.
² Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
³ Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.

Abstract

In addition to the genetic variations, recent evidence has shown that DNA methylation of both 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) underlies the pathogenesis of pediatric cancer. Given the high mortality rate, there is an urgent need to study the mechanisms contributing to the pathogenicity of pediatric cancer. Over the past decades, next-generation sequencing (NGS) has enabled us to perform genome-wide screening to study the complex regulatory mechanisms of 5mC and 5hmC underlying pediatric tumorigenesis. To shed light on recent developments on pediatric cancer predisposition and tumor progression, here we discuss the role of both genome-wide and locus-specific dysregulation of 5mC and 5hmC in hematopoiesis malignancy and neuroblastoma, the most common types of pediatric cancer, together with their therapeutic potential.

Keywords: 5hmC; 5mC; DNA methylation; acute lymphoblastic leukaemia; epigenetics; neuroblastoma; pediatric cancer.

Publication types

Editorial