Detalle Publicación

The landscape of lncRNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma: a translational perspective

Título de la revista: CANCERS
ISSN: 2072-6694
Volumen: 13
Número: 11
Páginas: 2651
Fecha de publicación: 2021
Resumen:
Simple Summary Hepatocellular carcinoma is the major form of liver cancer; it has a high incidence in the global population, and it is a leading cause of the world's cancer burden. Despite great efforts to understand the disease at the molecular level and develop effective treatments for hepatocellular carcinoma patients, current therapies for advanced cases are only effective in a small percentage of patients. Therefore, it is paramount to discover new tumor targets that can be used to develop alternative therapeutic strategies. Promising novel targets could be long non-coding RNAs. These RNA molecules are frequently found to be involved in the development and progression of cancer. More importantly, they can be safely targeted with several strategies. However, our knowledge about long non-coding RNA biology and their clinical relevance remains underdeveloped. In this review, we summarize current efforts to validate the importance of long non-coding RNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma and to evaluate their potential to impact the clinical setting. To do that we highlight lncRNA implication in key events leading to cancer and we describe how affecting lncRNAs could broaden the repertoire of potentially useful targets to help meet the challenge of hepatocellular carcinoma treatment. LncRNAs are emerging as relevant regulators of multiple cellular processes involved in cell physiology as well as in the development and progression of human diseases, most notably, cancer. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prominent cause of cancer-related death worldwide due to the high prevalence of causative factors, usual cirrhotic status of the tumor-harboring livers and the suboptimal benefit of locoregional and systemic therapies. Despite huge progress in the molecular characterization of HCC, no oncogenic loop addiction has been identified and most genetic alterations remain non-druggable, underscoring the importance of advancing research in novel approaches for HCC treatment. In this context, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) appear as potentially useful targets as they often exhibit high tumor- and tissue-specific expression and many studies have reported an outstanding dysregulation of lncRNAs in HCC. However, there is a limited perspective of the potential role that deregulated lncRNAs may play in HCC progression and aggressiveness or the mechanisms and therapeutic implications behind such effects. In this review, we offer a clarifying landscape of current efforts to evaluate lncRNA potential as therapeutic targets in HCC using evidence from preclinical models as well as from recent studies on novel oncogenic pathways that show lncRNA-dependency.