Publication details
Editorial: The Role of ncRNAs in Solid Tumors Prognosis: From Laboratory to Clinical Utility
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Periodical (without peer review) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Today we know that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) represent most of the transcribed human genome and participate in relevant cellular processes. NcRNAs regulate from RNA transcription to protein translation, have important epigenetic roles or facilitate protein–protein interactions among other functions. In consequence, their dysregulation has been associated with tumor development and progression. Recently, their expression has also been detected in body fluids, opening the use of circulating ncRNAs for diagnosis and for evaluation and monitoring cancer prognosis. The present Research Topic titled “The Role of ncRNAs in Solid Tumors’ Prognosis: From Laboratory to Clinical Utility” features 48 scientific studies (originals, meta-analysis and reviews) that display different functions that ncRNAs can make in the carcinogenesis process and how they can affect cancer treatment response and therefore, be of utility as cancer biomarkers in solid tumors. This topic includes two groups of papers: 1) articles describing mechanisms by which ncRNAs regulate cancer development and progression; and 2) articles that use both publicly available data (TCGA or GEO) or own researchers’ collected datasets to identify and validate ncRNA prognostic signatures for several cancers. NcRNAs can be classified in two major groups according to their size; small ncRNAs and long ncRNAs (lncRNAs); the last include a very heterogeneous group that have in common that they are longer than 200 nucleotides. From the small ncRNA group, the best studied class is microRNAs (miRNAs). miRNAs are short single-stranded RNAs, transcribed as long precursors finally processed to an 18–22 nucleotide product. Although a lot of different functions have been described for miRNAs, the most relevant one is the participation in the translation process, where they inhibit in a sequence-dependent manner the mRNA translation to protein of their target mRNAs. Furthermore, their utility as cancer biomarkers in solid tumors has been extensively studied in both tumor and liquid biopsy. Several authors have addressed this issue in this Research Topic. In the next paragraphs we are summarizing the main achieved results. |