Chronic Diseases Prevention Review (Online ISSN: 2158-0820)

by Zhongyou Que, Sheng Liu, Bingxi Lei 

Chronic Diseases Prevention Review 2022 6(24) 1-16; published online  25 March 2023

Abstract: Glioma is the most common primary tumor of the central nervous system and the tumor genetics of glioma has been a hot topic. In recent years, the role of ecDNA in tumors, especially glioma, has been gradually recognized. ecDNA can accelerate tumor evolution and mediate glioma drug resistance activity by randomly distributing in the interphase due to the lack of mitotic structure. The circle structure of ecDNA also has the characteristics of high openness, strong transcriptional activity and diverse regulatory modes. The study of glioma ecDNA has gone through three stages: classical karyotype analysis, basic function study and regulatory molecular mechanism study. In the era of karyotype analysis, early studies focused mostly on the description of cell karyotypes, but later merged with research on oncogenes. In the era of functional study of ecDNA, not only have many oncogenes located on ecDNA had been discovered, but also the mechanism of ecDNA involvement in glioma drug resistance had been revealed. In the past five years, the finer molecular regulatory mechanisms have become essential in further revealing the unique functions of ecDNA, mainly due to the advancement of biology experiments research tools and bioinformatics technologies.