Prostate cancer radiotherapy resistance: role of epigenetic enzymes

• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Oriana de Jesus
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/34354
• topic: Prostate cancer; Radiotherapy; Radioresistance; Epigenetic modifications; DNA damage repair

Prostate Cancer (PCa) displays one of the major incident rates among men worldwide. Despite low mortality rates, some of these tumours are heterogeneous, acquire aggressive phenotype and might disseminate, becoming resistant to therapy. With regard to therapeutic approaches, radiotherapy is effective as a primary treatment, in the treatment of localized PCa. However, radiation effectiveness decreases in more advanced stages, and within 5 years of follow-up, about 20-40% of patients with high-risk PCa may present tumour recurrence or distant metastasis after radiotherapy. In order to obtain an effective treatment, it is necessary to establish a functional balance between the 5’Rs of Radiobiology that define the patients’ outcome in response to ionizing radiation exposure. After radiotherapy, epigenetic changes at the cellular level, such as chromatin remodeling, affect the expression of several target genes related to cell growth, DNA damage repair and dysregulation of the cell cycle. There is an urgent need to further understand the molecular mechanisms as well as the divergent behaviour of PCa, overcoming the main limitations of current therapies to improve the final clinical patient’ outcomes.