Study Advance on Epigenetic Regulation of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes

The cytochromes P450 (CYPs) are a family of drug-metabolizing enzymes, which are responsible for the major part of metabolism of clinically important drugs and xenobiotic substances. The high interindividual variability in CYP450 expression and activity is used attributed to gene polymorphism, while it can not explain all the variability. Epigenetics is the study of cellular and physiological phenotypic trait variations that are due to external factors that switch genes on and off and affect how cells read genes. Unlike genetics based on changes to the DNA sequence (the genotype), the changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype, these changes include histone proteins post-translational modification, DNA methylation and miRNAs. In this review, we summary the epigenetic studies on human CYP450, illusion the regulation of epigenetic on expression of these drug-metabolizing enzymes, discuss its significance in drug metabolism and clinical applications clinical practice.