Recent Advances of PRMT5 in Cancer

Protein arginine methylation is one of the most abundant and evolutionarily conserved posttranslational modifications catalyzed by the PRMTs (protein arginine methyltransferases). PRMTs, encoded by nine genes in the human genome, can methylate histone and nonhistone proteins. As the main type II arginine methyltransferase, PRMT5 has been implicated in the control of many cellular processes such as cell cycle progression, signal transduction, gene expression regulation, RNA splicing and DNA-damage response. Overexpression of PRMT5 is frequently found in numerous human cancers with evidence indicative of an oncogene-like function. Here, an update on the recent advances of PRMT5 in cancer research is provided and the promise of targeting PRMT5 by small molecular inhibitors is discussed for treating aggressive human cancers.