Table 1.

Nucleases in correlation with cancer types

Name and type of nuclease	Type of cancer	Nuclease alteration	References
FEN1 DNase/RNase, endonuclease, exonuclease	uterine, colon, lung, and kidney cancer	Over expression of mRNA	[24]
	breast, gastric	Overexpression of mRNA and protein	[24, 25]
APE1 DNase, endonuclease	non–small cell lung-cancer	High expression at protein level, difference in subcellular expression patterns between cancer and benign	[26, 27]
	lung cancer	lower enzymatic activity correlated with higher risk	[20]
	ovarian	staining limited to the nuclei in healthy tissues, both nuclear and cytoplasmic expression was detected in cancer tissues	[28]
	gastric	Nuclear staining more prevalent than cytoplasmic staining in cancer tissues Elevated serum protein associated with lymph node metastasis	[29, 30]
	gastro-esophageal	overexpression	[29]
	breast	overexpression Increased cancer susceptibility correlated with the SNP variant Asp148Glu	[29, 31, 32]
	pancreatico-biliary	Overexpression, negative cytoplasmic expression with nuclear APE1 expression correlated with poor tumor differentiation, greater stage and vascular invasion	[29]
	prostate cancer and prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia	Increased cytoplasmic and nuclear expression	[33]
	human hepatocellular carcinoma	upregulation, elevated serum levels	[34, 35]
	bladder	Elevated serum concentration	[36]
	colorectal	stem cells exhibit higher expression compared with non-stem cells Asp148Glu and hOGG1 Ser326Cys polymorphisms associated with increased risk, higher frequency of the polymorphisms detected in blood samples from CRC patients compared with healthy subjects	[37, 38]
	head and neck	correlation between loss of nuclear expression and better prognosis and treatment response	[39]
	melanoma	high expression at mRNA level correlated with poor survival	[40]
XPF/XPG DNase, endonuclease	Lung, cervical and ovarian	ERCC1 overexpression associated with poor response to platinum-based chemotherapy Poor overall survival in ovarian cancer associated with high expression of XPG at RNA level	[21, 41]
	non-small cell lung cancer	Improved treatment response correlated with negative staining of tumor sample	[42]
	melanoma	ERCC1 deficiency correlated with improved response to cisplatin therapy	[43]
	gastric	improved treatment response and survival in correlation with elevated ERCC1 protein elevated expression of XPG	[21, 44]
	colorectal	improved survival in correlation with low ERCC1-mRNA expression in the tumors	[45]
	osteosarcoma	improved treatment response to a platinum-based therapy in XPF and XPG knocked down cell line	[46]
MRN Complex DNase, endonuclease/exonuclease	breast	loss of expression in breast cancer tissues	[47]
	Colorectal	mutations in MRE11 resulting in reduced expression of MRE11 and impaired function of the MRN complex	[48]
	endometrial	loss of MRE11 expression, loss of MRE11 correlated with the loss of the other components of the complex, mutations in MRE11 resulting in reduced expression of MRE11 and impaired function of MRN complex	[48, 49]
	bladder	High expression of MRE11 correlated with improved survival	[50]
	gastric carcinoma with high level microsatellite instability	mutations of the intronic poly(T)11 repeat in MRE11	[51]
TREX2 DNase, exonuclease	skin carcinogenesis	Knock out mouse model	[52]
	SCC	deregulated expression
	HNSCC	deregulated expression, decreased relative dsDNase activity in the R156L variant
SND1 RNase, endonuclease	human hepatocellular carcinoma	overexpression increased angiogenesis	[53, 54]
	breast cancer	mRNA overexpression correlated with reduced survival	[55]
	prostate cancer	overexpression of protein and mRNA, positive correlation with tumor grade	[56]
	colon cancer	Overexpression of mRNA	[57]
DNaseI endonuclease	gastric carcinoma, colorectal carcinoma	high frequency of DNaseI phenotype2	[58, 59]
RNaseL endonuclease	prostate cancer	RNaseL mutations, SNPs	[60, 61]
		decreased enzymatic activity of the variant	[62]
	uterine cervix, HNSCC and breast cancer	a correlation between increased cancer risk and RNaseL SNP rs3738579	[63]
RNaseI endonuclease	Pancreatic adenocarcinoma	difference in glycosylation between healthy and cancer	[64, 65]
Serum RNase activity	pancreatic carcinoma	elevated serum ribonuclease activity	[66]

Table 1 summarizes literature findings about nucleases involved in cancer and alteration of nucleases in correlation with respective cancer types