Can epi-drugs capture the next wave of growth?

Published: 19-Dec-2016
Media Ingredients Analysis Pharmaceutical

An explosion in the field of epigenetics has revealed multiple ‘goldmines’ in the form of biological targets. Pharmaceutical companies with the most developed implementation capabilities are likely to capture the next wave of this growth

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Why isn’t a human heart cell able to divide and multiply? After all, this might (theoretically) mean we could have an additional heart, in standby mode, with the potential to prevent heart attack-related deaths. Why do identical twins end up having different lives in spite of their similar genetic make up? Questions such as these are highly perplexing; but, nature has a one-word answer: epigenetics!

The epigenetics treasure trove

A copy of the entire genome (>3 billion DNA base pairs) is present in all cells that have a nucleus. However, specific signals are given to each cell that can either turn a particular gene (or a set of genes) on or off. The results bring a world of difference, not to mention life in general. The branch of study that deals with changes in gene expression and/or phenotype without alterations in DNA sequence is epigenetics.

The length of a strand of DNA is about 2m. There are times when a relaxed DNA conformation is required to do routine housekeeping; however, there is an external mechanism required to coil the DNA inside the nucleus — which has an average diameter is only 6 microns! This mechanism (epigenetic modification) is necessary to preserve DNA from damage or undesired effects.1

Epigenetic modifications are initiated by either adding or removing chemical tags to the DNA or its binding partner, histones. A plethora of enzymes are recruited to participate in dynamic epigenetic modifications and, together, they make up the human epigenome.

These enzymes are classified as writers (the ones that implant chemical tags), readers (the ones that recognise chemical tags) and erasers (the ones that remove chemical tags). How these enzymes participate in a highly complex but organised framework to orchestrate various physiological events constitutes the ‘mysterious’ epigenetic code.2

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