Targeting EZH2 for the treatment of soft tissue sarcomas

Abstract

Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are a heterogenous group of rare malignancies of mesenchymal origin, affecting both children and adults. The majority of STS have a poor prognosis and advanced stage at the time of diagnosis. Standard treatments for STS largely constitute tumour resection with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, and there has been little significant advancement in the application of novel therapies for treatment of these tumours. The current multimodal approach to therapy often leads to long-term side effects, and for some patients, resistance to cytotoxic agents is associated with local recurrence and/or metastasis. There is, therefore, a need for novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of STS. Recent advances in epigenetics have implicated the histone methyltransferase, EZH2, in the development and progression of diseases such as breast cancer, lymphoma and more recently STS. Here we will review the current literature for EZH2 in STS, including high expression of EZH2 in STS and correlation of this with specific features of malignancy (metastasis, histological grade, and prognosis). The effects of targeting EZH2 using RNA interference and small molecule inhibitors will also be reviewed and the potential for the use of EZH2 inhibition in therapeutic strategies for STS patients will be discussed