| Gastric cancer is a complex heterogeneous disease which is the fourth prevalent malignancy worldwide.
Although, several diagnosis and treatment are available for the gastric cancer patients, however the malignancy
is still the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the world. Beside the genetic and environmental factors,
epigenetic alterations are also involved in the emergence of gastric cancer. Epigenetics alterations are heritable
changes which regulate gene expression without occurring changes in DNA sequence. Epigenetic changes mostly
include DNA methylation, histon post-translational modifications, chromatin remodeling and non-coding RNAs.
Among the mentioned epigenetic modifications, DNA methylation is a major epigenetic process that plays a key
role in different stages of evolution and cancer development. In this review, we address all types of related
epigenetic modifications in gastric cancer by focus on DNA methylation by reviewing the recent literatures.
Understanding of molecular mechanisms of epigenetics alterations in gastric cancer development helps researchers
to identify new epigenetic drugs against the malignancy. |