Hormone Receptors in Cancer

Dear Colleagues,

Cancer is known to be caused by various environmental factors which transmit intracellular signaling to reduce apoptosis or promote cell cycle for proliferation and invasion. Numerous of studies have reported that hormone receptors play important roles in both the development and progression of cancer. In particular, the dysregulated target signals of estrogen receptor (ER) in breast cancer and androgen receptor (AR) in prostate cancer have been extensively investigated. Although hormone receptors have been shown to be involved in numerous cellular processes, including both at a transcriptional and a non-genomic level, most of them acts as nuclear receptor (NR) to exert its function by binding to specific genomic sites and regulates the target gene expression. Recently, the central role of chromatin structure and epigenetic modification in NR-mediated gene regulation has been highlighted. NR such as ER and AR functions through interaction with tissue-specific transcription factors such as forkhead box protein A1 (FOXA1). Epigenetic changes including altered DNA methylation, histone modification, and chromatin remodeling are induced upon NR recruitment. Interestingly, non-coding RNAs such as long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and micro RNAs (miRNAs) also modulate epigenetic status through NR function directly or indirectly. Mutation or dysregulated expression of these epigenetic modifiers has been observed in clinical studies. Moreover, recent advances in nuclear receptor researches have shown that increased expression of splice variants, and protein level modifications such as ubiquitylation and phosphorylation were found to be key events in NR signaling and cancer progression.

This Special Issue focuses on understanding various molecular mechanisms to regulate hormone receptor functions, such as post-translational modification or epigenetic regulation in cancer genome. Target effects by these transcriptional or non-genomic programs to promote cell proliferation, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, enhance migratory potential and altered metabolism in cancer cells will also be discussed. We welcome experts in the field to contribute research papers and critical reviews on the various facets of hormone receptor signaling in human cancers for increasing our knowledge, as well as on how clinical data may be exploited as tools in developing anti-cancer therapies and new biomarkers. Studies associated with any kind of hormones and any type of cancer will be accepted.

Dr. Kenichi Takayama
Guest Editor

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• hormone receptor
• nuclear receptor
• steroid hormone
• epigenetic factor
• non-coding RNA
• transcription
• chromatin
• post-transcriptional regulation
• non-genomic function
• splicing
• cell signaling
• apoptosis
• cell proliferation
• invasion
• metastasis