Professor Yong Kee Kim's Team Highlights PRMT-Driven Cancer Mechanisms and Therapeutic Potential
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- Writer 커뮤니케이션팀
- 보도일자 2026-04-08
(From left) Professor Yong Kee Kim, Dr. Yena Cho, and undergraduate student Yunae Jeong of the College of Pharmacy
A research team led by Professor Yong Kee Kim of the College of Pharmacy has published a comprehensive review outlining the critical roles of protein arginine methyltransferases(PRMTs) in cancer development and progression, positioning them as key targets for next-generation anticancer therapies.
PRMTs are enzymes that methylate arginine residues on histone and non-histone proteins, thereby regulating gene expression, RNA splicing, signal transduction, and DNA repair. Dysregulation of this system disrupts epigenetic and post-transcriptional networks, ultimately promoting cancer cell proliferation and survival.
PRMT-mediated methylation coordinately governs cell-cycle control, metabolic reprogramming, and immune evasion. Accordingly, PRMTs have emerged as attractive targets for synthetic lethality–based therapies, which selectively eliminate cancer cells harboring specific genetic defects. Driven by this potential, global pharmaceutical companies are rapidly advancing the development of selective PRMT inhibitors.
The research team has previously demonstrated that arginine methylation regulated by CARM1, a member of the PRMT family, plays critical roles in cell division, mitochondrial function, and cytoskeletal homeostasis. More recently, the team also identified arginine demethylases, highlighting the reversible nature of this modification.
Building on these findings, the present review integrates key mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities in PRMT-driven cancer biology into a unified framework, providing a comprehensive perspective on the field.
"PRMTs represent a central molecular axis underlying cancer initiation and progression," said Professor Kim. "They hold significant promise as targets for next-generation precision oncology."
This review is based on the research of Dr. Yena Cho at Sookmyung Women's University and was systematically compiled by undergraduate student Yunae Jeong through a comprehensive analysis of recent advances and emerging trends in the PRMT field. It was published in the Journal of Biomedical Science (impact factor 12.1; top 4.6% in JCR). This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), including the Medical Research Center (MRC) Program, the Basic Research Program (Mid-Career Researcher Program), the Korea–EU Advanced Bio Global Joint Research Center, and the Doctoral Student Research Grant Program.
Publication: Jeong Y, Cho Y, Kim YK (2026) Protein arginine methyltransferases in cancer: mechanisms, functions, and therapeutic opportunities. J Biomed Sci 33, 37.