Involvement of lncRNA dysregulation in gastric cancer

Benefiting from the fast development of sequencing technique and bioinformatics methods, more and more new long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are discovered and identified. lncRNAs were firstly thought to be transcription noise that from genome desert without biological function; however, as the discovery of lncRNA XIST and HOTAIR uncovers the emerging roles of lncRNAs in development and tumorigenesis. In the past decades, accumulating evidence have indicated that lncRNAs involve in a wide range of biological functions, such as X-chromosome inactivation, reprogramming stem cell pluripotency, regulation of the immune response and carcinogenesis. Although lots of studies have demonstrated that dysregulation of lncRNAs involve in diverse diseases including cancers, the underlying molecular mechanisms of lncRNAs are not well documented. Interestingly, our previous studies and others' have shown that numerous of lncRNAs expression was misregulated in gastric cancer. In this review, we will focus on the dysregulated lncRNAs and their biological function and underlying pathways or mechanisms in GC. Finally, we will discuss the potential roles of lncRNAs acting as biomarkers or therapeutic targets in GC patients.