Researchers at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health, say they have identified a set of new genetic biomarkers that could potentially lead to new personalized treatments for lung cancer. Their study “Recruitment of KMT2C/MLL3 to DNA damage sites mediates DNA damage responses and regulates PARP inhibitor sensitivity in cancer” appears online in Cancer Research.
“When recruited to promoters, histone 3 lysine 4 (H3K4) methyltransferases KMT2 (KMT2A-D) activate transcription by opening chromatin through H3K4 methylation. Here we report that KMT2 mutations occur frequently in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and are associated with high mutation loads and poor survival,” write the investigators.
