Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications
Publication Date
3-17-2023
Journal
Biomedicines
DOI
10.3390/biomedicines11030936
PMID
36979914
PMCID
PMC10046157
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
3-17-2023
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
human endogenous retrovirus, breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, skin cancer, reproductive cancer, liver cancer, prostate cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, renal cancer
Abstract
Genomic instability and genetic mutations can lead to exhibition of several cancer hallmarks in affected cells such as sustained proliferative signaling, evasion of growth suppression, activated invasion, deregulation of cellular energetics, and avoidance of immune destruction. Similar biological changes have been observed to be a result of pathogenic viruses and, in some cases, have been linked to virus-induced cancers. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), once external pathogens, now occupy more than 8% of the human genome, representing the merge of genomic and external factors. In this review, we outline all reported effects of HERVs on cancer development and discuss the HERV targets most suitable for cancer treatments as well as ongoing clinical trials for HERV-targeting drugs. We reviewed all currently available reports of the effects of HERVs on human cancers including solid tumors, lymphomas, and leukemias. Our review highlights the central roles of HERV genes, such as gag, env, pol, np9, and rec in immune regulation, checkpoint blockade, cell differentiation, cell fusion, proliferation, metastasis, and cell transformation. In addition, we summarize the involvement of HERV long terminal repeat (LTR) regions in transcriptional regulation, creation of fusion proteins, expression of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), and promotion of genome instability through recombination.
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