胃肠癌是常见的恶性肿瘤，死亡率高，预后差。因此，开发胃肠道癌症的新型有效标志物和治疗靶点是目前肿瘤学研究中具有挑战性和热门的课题。越来越多的研究表明，N6-甲基腺苷是真核生物中最丰富的表观遗传修饰。 N6-甲基腺苷在调节 RNA 表达和代谢（包括剪接、翻译、稳定性、衰变和运输）中发挥重要作用。 FTO是最早发现的维持N6-腺苷甲基化平衡的去甲基化酶，在许多肿瘤中异常表达。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了 FTO 的分子结构和底物选择性。我们重点关注FTO在胃肠道肿瘤增殖、迁移、侵袭、凋亡、自噬、免疫微环境中的作用及其分子机制。我们还讨论了它在治疗胃肠道癌症方面的潜力。版权所有 © 2023 Ren、Tang、Huang、Hu、Wang 和 Zhou。

Gastrointestinal cancer is a common malignancy with high mortality and poor prognosis. Therefore, developing novel effective markers and therapeutic targets for gastrointestinal cancer is currently a challenging and popular topic in oncology research. Accumulating studies have reported that N6-methyladenosine is the most abundant epigenetic modification in eukaryotes. N6-methyladenosine plays an essential role in regulating RNA expression and metabolism, including splicing, translation, stability, decay, and transport. FTO, the earliest demethylase discovered to maintain the balance of N6-adenosine methylation, is abnormally expressed in many tumors. In this review, we discuss the molecular structure and substrate selectivity of FTO. we focus on the role of FTO in gastrointestinal tumor proliferation, migration, invasion, apoptosis, autophagy, immune microenvironment, and its molecular mechanisms. We also discuss its potential in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers.Copyright © 2023 Ren, Tang, Huang, Hu, Wang and Zhou.