Competing endogenous RNAs and cancer: How coding and non-coding molecules cross-talk can impinge on disease

Abstract

Cancers are characterized by several dramatic biological changes. Among the many post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, microRNAs are known as fine-tune regulators for their transcript silencing ability. Competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) are transcripts that share microRNA binding elements and can compete for them, thus regulating each other indirectly. ceRNA networks interconnect the regulatory control of different transcript classes of the coding and non-coding space and co-operate with other cellular and molecular regulatory mechanisms. Altered ceRNA networks are involved in tumor formation and progression as well as in chemoresistance, in invasion and in the onset of metastases. The analysis of changes in the balance between ceRNA transcripts could offer hints to identify novel pathways for diagnosis, prognosis and therapies in precision medicine interventions. Moreover, the possibility to query highly specific tumor databases, such as TCGA, and to combine clinical data, transcript expression and sequence information is allowing to develop specific predictive tools for precision medicine.

Keywords: Cancer; Competing endogenous RNAs; Gene regulatory networks; MicroRNAs.