Mechanism and Application Strategy of Histone Modification in Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is a global disease burden and severe malignant disease, which has been a major morbidity and mortality double burden. Current lung cancer treatment still suffers from severe problems, including drug resistance, high metastasis frequency, and tumor heterogeneity, and allows new therapeutic manner to be developed. Histone modification, which is the major epigenetic modification mechanism, has demonstrated great application potential of targeted therapy against lung cancer. This review systematically summarizes the central role of histone acetylation modification and methylation modification in the pathogenesis of lung cancer. Plus, it focuses on the mechanism of key enzymes such as HDAC and EZH2 to promote the malignant progression of tumors by gene expression as well as regulating chromatin structure. Research has established that inhibitors targeting these targets have yielded encouraging results in clinical studies, especially with the combination strategy of chemotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. However, challenges such as poor drug selectivity, epigenetic heterogeneity, and complex modification networks still need to be overcome. In the future, it is necessary to promote the clinical application of histone modification targeted interventions in the realm of precision treatment against lung cancer through interdisciplinary cooperation, combined with multi-omics analysis and new technical means.