Main description:

Epigenetics has emerged recently as an important area of molecular biological studies. Epigenetic modifications lead to potentially heritable but reversible alterations in the expression of genes that determine cell fate. Epigenetic misregulation is thus often linked to degenerative diseases, cancer and neuronal disorders.
Recent biomedical interest in this regulatory system stems from the fact that epigenetic, in contrast to genetic, alterations are in principle amenable to pharmacological intervention. A few epigenetically active drugs, for example histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) and DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) inhibitors, have been approved by FDA for treatment of cancers such as CTCL, MDS, and AML.
This volume explores the scientific background for clinical applications of epigenetically active drugs. Included are descriptions of epigenetic controls over gene expression, the post-transcriptional silencing of genes by RNA interference (RNAi) and microRNAs, as well as new findings from stem cell research which are relevant to pharmacological applications.

Contents:

1 DNA Methylation and Cancer
Phillippa C. Taberlay and Peter A. Jones

2 Genome-wide Epigenetic Modifications in Cancer
Yoon Jung Park, Rainer Claus, Dieter Weichenhan and Christoph Plass

3 DNA Repair and the Control of DNA Methylation
Primo Schar and Olivier Fritsch

4 Errors in Erasure: Links Between Histone lysine Methylation Removal and Disease
Elizabeth M. Duncan and C. David Allis

5 Histone Modifications in Cancer Biology and Prognosis
Siavash K. Kurdistani

6 Dynamics of Histone Lysine Methylation: Structures of Methyl Writers and Eraser
Anup K. Upadhyay and Xiaodong Cheng

7 Epigenetic Mechanisms of Mental Retardation
Anne Schaefer, Alexander Tarakhovsky and Paul Greengard

8 Histone and DNA Modifications in Mental Retardation
Shigeki Iwase and Yang Shi

9 HDAC Inhibitors and Cancer Therapy
Peter W. Atadja

10 Epigenetic Mechanisms in Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Antoine H.F.M. Peters and Juerg Schwaller

11 The Liver-Specific MicroRNA miR-122: Biology and Therapeutic Potential
Witold Filipowicz and Helge Grosshans

12 Transcriptional Regulatory Networks in Embryonic Stem Cells
Yun Shen Chan, Lin Yang, Huck-Hui Ng

13 Small Molecules in Cellular Reprogramming and Differentiation
Xu Yuan, Wenlin Li and Sheng Ding