The roles of chromatin remodeling proteins in cancer

Chromatin remodeling complexes (chromatin remodelers) have been demonstrated as essential and powerful regulators for critical DNA-templated cellular processes, such as DNA replication, recombination, gene transcription/repression, and DNA damage repair. These molecular and genetic processes are important for a wide spectrum of cellular functions including, cell cycle, death, differentiation, pluripotency, and genome integrity. Not surprisingly, dysfunctions of chromatin remodeling proteins are observed in human developmental disorders and diseases. Specifically for human malignancies, genomic sequence analyses show that mutations and other genetic alternations of chromatin remodelers exist in almost all human tumor types. Using human cancer cell lines, xenograft models and genetically engineered mouse models, functions of chromatin remodelers in human cancers have been studied extensively in the last 10-15 years. In this review, we summarize the functional and mechanistic studies of chromatin remodelers in the initiation, progression and metastasis of human cancers.