Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a prevalent tumor in southern China and southeast Asia. Recent studies have demonstrated that viral infection, somatic genetic changes, and epigenetic changes synergistically contribute to NPC pathogenesis. Genome-wide studies show that epigenetic aberrations likely drive nasopharyngeal carcinoma development and progression. This work is aimed at investigating the effect of histone methyltransferase SUV39H2 in NPC. The elevated expression of SUV39H2 in NPC is observed by analyzing GSE53819 and GSE12452 downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. SUV39H2 knockdown inhibits NPC proliferation and induces the apoptosis of cancer cells. At last, RNaseq analysis identifies a variety of SUV39H2 downstream genes related with cancer, in which, NRIP1 is identified as a critical downstream target of SUV39H2 in NPC. Taken together, these findings provide a theoretical basis for understating the biological roles of SUV39H2 in NPC. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.