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Glossary

A neoadjuvant treatment permits reducing a tumour before surgery. The latter can be facilitated with the possible preservation of the organ affected. It is also possible to program such treatment before radiotherapy to improve its efficiency and increase the chances of the patient being cured. Neoadjuvant treatments can consist of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormonotherapy.

Neoangiogenesis is the mechanism in cancer that permits the creation of new blood vessels to supply cancerous tumours and ensure their growth.

Neoangiogenesis only refers to this phenomenon in cancer, since angiogenesis is the mechanism responsible for the formation of blood vessels throughout the human body (except in tumours).

Blood vessels are a key element in cell development whether cancerous or not, since they transport blood, convey the nutritive elements necessary for the cells, and they eliminate the waste produced by the latter.
 

The nucleosome is a complex of DNA and proteins (histones) that, in eucaryotes, compose the basic unit of chromatin. It represents the first level of DNA compaction. By controlling the accessibility of the double strand of DNA, it is directly involved in the regulation of several nuclear processes like DNA transcription, replication and repair .

Their role has only been understood recently. Nucleosomes make each segment of DNA more or less accessible to the enzymes that transcript the genes and modulate their expression. Also, the more methylated a portion of DNA is, the more compact it becomes, and the less the genes, now inaccessible, can be expressed. On the contrary, the more acetylated the histones are, the more accessible the genes become. DNA methylation and histone acetylation are “epigenetic marks”.