Relationship between mitochondrial DNA alteration and gastric cancer / 国际肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is more susceptible to oxidative damage and has a higher mutation rate compared with nuclear DNA due to the absence of protective histone proteins and imperfect repair system.Somatic alterations in mtDNA have been proposed to contribute to initiation and progression of human cancer in previous researches.However,the role of these mtDNA alterations in gastric cancer progression remains unclear.Point mutations and mtDNA content alterations are the two most common mtDNA alterations that result in mitochondrial dysfunction in gastric cancers.Identifing somatic mtDNA alterations in gastric cancers as well as their association with the clinicopathological parameters of gastric cancer,and exploring the causative factors of the somatic mtDNA alterations in cancer progression have been a new direction of gastric cancer research in recent years.