Molecular epigenetic targets for liver diseases: current challenges and future prospects.

Advanced chemotherapy fails to treat liver cancer but recent progress in understanding epigenetic modifications have witnessed promising clinical outcomes. Epigenetic alteration is the alteration of epigenomes (surrounding histone proteins) without changing the DNA sequence. Such epigenetic mechanisms include histone modifications such as methylation, acetylation, phosphorylation and sumoylation followed by changes in the genomic architecture. Current studies involving the understanding of small RNA molecules such as noncoding RNA and microRNA in modulating the chromatin architecture are explained in depth here, along with effects of some novel compounds from recent preclinical and clinical evidence. This review also discusses the current state-of-the-art strategies and the possible scope of investigation to improve the existing treatment methods for liver-related disorders.