Long noncoding RNA: an emerging paradigm of cancer research

Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of non-protein coding part of human genome in carcinogenesis and metastasis. Among numerous kinds of non-protein coding RNAs, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a key regulatory role in cancer biology. LncRNAs are dysregulated in different kinds of cancer and the expression levels of certain lncRNAs are associated with recurrence, metastasis, and prognosis of cancer. It is also proved that overexpression of certain lncRNAs, behaving like oncogenes, can promote matrix invasion of cancer cells and tumor growth. In this review, we focus our attention on lncRNAs those have been validated in human cancer tissues to suggest reasonable strategies for future research. We introduce an update view of lncRNA, extract cancer-related lncRNAs from literature, and describe the known functions and possible underlying molecular mechanisms of some well investigated lncRNAs (MALAT1, HOX antisense intergenic RNA, and highly upregulated in hepatocellular cancer), as well as their current and potential future application in cancer diagnosis (PCA3) and treatment (H19).