Epigenomics in Hurthle Cell Neoplasms: Filling in the Gaps Towards Clinical Application

It has been widely described that cancer genomes have frequent alterations to the epigenome, including epigenetic silencing of various tumor suppressor genes with functions in almost all cancer-relevant signalling pathways, such as apoptosis, cell proliferation, cell migration and DNA repair. Epigenetic alterations comprise DNA methylation, histone modification, and microRNAs dysregulated expression and they play a significant role in the differentiation and proliferation properties of TC. In this review, our group assessed the published evidence on the tumorigenic role of epigenomics in Hurthle cell neoplasms (HCN), highlighting the yet limited, heteregeneous and non-validated data preventing its current use in clinical practice, despite the well developed assessment techniques available. The identified evidence gaps call for a joint endeavour by the medical community towards a deeper and more systematic study of HCN, aiming at defining epigenetic markers in early diagnose, allowing for accurate stratification of maligancy and disease risk and for effective systemic treatment. ; This work was financed by FEDER—Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional funds through the COMPETE 2020 —Operacional Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI), Portugal 2020, and by Portuguese funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia/ Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação in the framework of the project “Institute for Research and Innovation in Health Sciences” (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007274). Additional funding by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization—COMPETE2020, and Portuguese national funds via FCT, under project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016390: CANCEL STEM and from the FCT under the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031438: The other faces of telomerase: Looking beyond tumor immortalization (PDTC/MED_ONC/ 31438/2017). Additional funding through the Sociedade Portuguesa de Endocrinologia, Diabetes e Metabolismo – Bolsa ...