ABSTRACT
Leukemia is a disease featured by the malignant proliferation of hematopoietic stem cells or progenitor cells in the blood system.While chemotherapy remains its mainstream treatment,disease relapse and drug resistance are still challenging problems.As one of the epigenetic mechanisms,histone methylation is involved in cell proliferation,differentiation,and apoptosis by regulating gene transcription.Recent studies have found that the histone demethylase lysine-specific demethylase 6A(KDM6A),also known as ubiquitously transcribed tetratricopeptide repeat on chromosome X(UTX),is closely related to the occurrence of a variety of tumors,especially leukemia.KDM6A activates gene expression by demethylating H3K27me3 to H3K27me2 or H3K27me1.Besides,KDM6A can regulate the activation of the target gene transcription through its non-demethylase functions.It can serve as the subunit of complex of proteins associated with Set1,thus getting involved in the regulation of H3K4me1.It can be combined with yeast mating type conversion/sucrose unfermented complex family to promote the formation of an open chromatin conformation.Finally,it can promote the production of H3K27ac.This article reviews the recent studies on the structure and biological activity of histone demethylase KDM6A(UTX)and its role in treating leukemia,thus providing a new research direction for targeted treatment of leukemia.