A New Insight into the Development of Novel Anti-Cancer Drugs that Improve the Expression of Mitochondrial Function-Associated Genes

Abstract

Recent analyses of the whole genome sequencing data enable us to predict cancer incidence for healthy people at present. In addition, metabolome analyses rediscovered that "cancer is a metabolic disease". Importantly, it has been suggested that mitochondrial dysfunction might precede the metabolic change. In this chapter, we would discuss if "cancer is a transcriptional disease". Analyzing 5′-upstream non-protein-encoding regions of the human mitochondrial function-associated genes, we speculate that mitochondrial functions could be recovered or improved at a transcriptional level. In the near future, novel chemo-/gene-therapies might be applied to treat cancer patient converting cancerous cells into normal differentiated cells.