DMMC Course: UNRAVELLING CHROMATIN & THE ROLE OF EPIGENETICS IN DISEASE

1445-1530 Wednesday 26 April 2006. UCD Conway Institute Lecture Theatre

Use of demethylating agents and histone deacetylase inhibitors in the clinical setting
Dr Steven Gray (Institute of Molecular Medicine, St James’s Hospital & TCD)

Demethylating agents have been extensively investigated for the treatment of disease. This has recently culminated with the FDA approval of Azacytidine for the treatment of myelodysplastic syndromes in 2004. Histone deacetylase inhibitors are also actively being pursued in the clinical setting. Skeptics have traditionally argued that such drugs would trigger global gene transcription alterations and consequently have adverse side-effects, but for unknown reasons HDAC inhibitors seem relatively safe. This talk will present the current available clinical data for the use of agents targetting the epigenome in the clinical setting, and will discuss the potential uses of these drugs in the clinic.