Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine & Molecular Diagnostics

Biography

Biography: Mohammadreza Hajjari

Abstract

Long non-coding RNAs are usually more than 200 nucleotides in length and do not encode any protein. They are mostly transcribed from the regions that previously known to be as “Junk DNA”. The discovery of numerous lncRNAs in human has dramatically altered our understanding of cell biology. Different studies indicate that these RNAs are involved in different biological processes such as gene regulation, epigenetic mechanisms, protein trafficking and stability, etc. Recently, different roles including tumor suppressor and oncogenic functions have been attributed to these RNAs. The dysregulation of different lncRNAs in some cancers has been observed in different studies. Various databases are also designed to report the comparison of the expression of these RNAs between normal and tumor tissues. Based on the different studies, some lncRNAs such as HOTAIR are considered as oncolncRNAs, and some of them such as MEG3 are considered as TSlncRNAs (Tumor suppressor). Finding novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for cancers has been always important. Some proteins have been considered as biomarkers for some cancers. However, the discovery of novel biomarkers with high sensitivity/specificity are still challenging. Due to the stability of lncRNAs in various biological samples such as urine and serum, the lncRNAs have attracted different researchers trying to find novel biomarkers/therapeutic targets for cancer. This would be more interesting when we know that one of the lncRNAs named PCA3 has been approved as a prostate cancer biomarker by FDA. So, it seems that lncRNAs are rapidly becoming essential pieces in cancer puzzles.