HDAC Inhibitors for which Cancer/Autism?
Most types of autism can be viewed as the miss-expression of a few hundred genes, in some cases this has been caused by an initial defect in just one gene. These single gene autisms are the ones that are usually studied. Epigenetics has been covered previously in this blog and can either be made to look ultra-complex, which is the reality, or quite simple. The simple view is that in some people genes are miss-expressed because they have been tagged with heritable and removable markers; these can be wiped away. One type of epigenetic marker can be modified by an HDAC inhibitor or HDI. Some medical conditions featured genes turned off when they should be on. For example tumor suppressor gene (and autism gene) PTEN is turned off in the prostate of many males with prostate cancer; a neat therapy would be to switch it back on. Deacetylation of PTEN by SIRT1 deacetylase and, by HDAC1 , can stimulate its activity , so probably a good thing for people with this kind of co...