The patent presents 140 purine and 7-azapurine derivatives as potent inhibitors of DOT1L histone methyltransferase that might be useful in the treatment of leukemia with MLL rearrangements. It is becoming more and more evident that the deregulation of chromatin modifiers such as DOT1L plays a critical role in tumorigenesis. As yet, the number of pharmaceutical agents targeting chromatin modifie...

Chromatin structure is gaining increasing attention as a potential target in the treatment of cancer. Relaxation of the chromatin fiber facilitates transcription and is regulated by two competing enzymatic activities, histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs), which modify the acetylation state of histone proteins and other promoter-bound transcription factors. While HA...

Epigenetic mechanisms by altering the expression and, in turn, functions of target genes have potential to modify cellular processes that are characteristics of atherosclerosis, including inflammation, proliferation, migration and apoptosis/cell death. Butyrate, a natural epigenetic modifier and a histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi), is an inhibitor of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proli...

Epigenetics refers to heritable changes that control how the genome is accessed in different cell-types and during development and differentiation. Even though each cell contains essentially the same genetic code, epigenetic mechanisms permit specialization of function between cells. The state of chromatin, the complex of histone proteins, RNA and DNA that efficiently package the genome, is lar...

This article discusses the advances made in epigenetic research using the model organism fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. S. pombe has been used for epigenetic research since the discovery of position effect variegation (PEV). This is a phenomenon in which a transgene inserted within heterochromatin is variably expressed, but can be stably inherited in subsequent cell generations. PEV o...

Histone lysine methylation is a dynamic chromatin modification that plays key regulatory roles in gene expression and other genomic functions. Methylation of Lys9 in histone H3 (H3K9) is a prominent modification that has been implicated in diverse processes, including transcriptional silencing, heterochromatin formation, and DNA methylation. In this review, we summarize recent advances in under...

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are tumor initiating cells within the tumor mass; that play a critical role in cancer pathogenesis. CSCs regulate cancer cell survival, metastatic potential, resistance to conventional radiochemotherapy, disease relapse and poor prognosis. Recent studies have established that the drug resistant cancers and cancer cell lines possess high stem cell like traits compared to...

Eukaryotes regulate gene expression and other nuclear processes through the posttranslational modification of histones. In S. cerevisiae, the mono-ubiquitylation of histone H2B on lysine 123 (H2B K123ub) affects nucleosome stability, broadly influences gene expression and other DNA-templated processes, and is a prerequisite for additional conserved histone modifications that are associated with...

An important area of research is the functional significance of posttranslational modifications of histone proteins. The modification of histones is maintained by a balance of enzymes which place specific modifications (writers), factors which read modifications (readers), and enzymes which remove modifications (erasers). Histone methylation is regulated by histone methyltransferases (writers) ...

Post-translational methylation of histone lysine or arginine residues plays important roles in gene regulation and other physiological processes. Aberrant histone methylation caused by a gene mutation, translocation, or overexpression can often lead to initiation of a disease such as cancer. Small molecule inhibitors of such histone modifying enzymes that correct the abnormal methylation could ...