Role and Mechanism of Super-enhancers in Tumor Metastasis

Abstract

Super-enhancers (SEs) are large clusters of enhancers located near the promoter and are necessary to determine the identity of cancer cells. The alterations of super-enhancers can cause dysregulation of the transcriptional program, which resulted in tumor cells being addicted to certain transcriptional programs. Tumor metastasis is the leading cause of death in cancer. Recently, SEs have been demonstrated to facilitate tumor metastasis by regulating lncRNA generation, tumor microenvironment, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and cancer stem cells. In this review, the characteristics of SEs, the relationship between SEs and tumor metastasis, and inhibitors against SEs are summarized to provide a reference for the relevant mechanism of SEs regulating tumor metastasis and provide new perspectives for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with cancer metastasis.

Keywords

• super-enhancers
• tumor metastasis
• long non-coding rna
• epithelial-mesenchymal transition
• cancer stem cells
• tumor microenvironment
• inhibitor