REV7 in Cancer Biology and Management

SIMPLE SUMMARY: REV7 is a multifunctional protein involved in various biological processes including DNA damage response and mutagenesis, cell cycle regulation, primordial germ cell maintenance, and cancer cell biology. Although human REV7 was originally discovered as a homologous molecule to a mutagenic protein, Rev7, and a spindle assembly checkpoint protein, Mad2, in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, investigations of vertebrate REV7 identified several novel biological networks surrounding REV7. In addition, studies using human cancer tissues and cancer cell lines revealed the significance of REV7 in cancer biology, which makes REV7 an attractive target molecule in cancer management. This review focuses on the functions of REV7 in human cancers and discusses the utility of REV7 in cancer management. ABSTRACT: DNA repair and cell cycle regulation are potential biological fields to develop molecular targeting therapies for cancer. Human REV7 was originally discovered as a homologous molecule to yeast Rev7, which is involved in DNA damage response and mutagenesis, and as the second homolog of yeast Mad2, involved in the spindle assembly checkpoint. Although REV7 principally functions in the fields of DNA repair and cell cycle regulation, many binding partners of REV7 have been identified using comprehensive analyses in the past decade, and the significance of REV7 is expanding in various other biological fields, such as gene transcription, epigenetics, primordial germ cell survival, neurogenesis, intracellular signaling, and microbial infection. In addition, the clinical significance of REV7 has been demonstrated in studies using human cancer tissues, and investigations in cancer cell lines and animal models have revealed the greater impacts of REV7 in cancer biology, which makes it an attractive target molecule for cancer management. This review focuses on the functions of REV7 in human cancer and discusses the utility of REV7 for cancer management with a summary of the recent development of inhibitors targeting REV7.