Non Coding RNAs: A New Avenue for the Self-Tailoring of Blood Cancer Treatment

Hematological malignancies, accounting for about 10% of all deaths for cancer, include various forms of leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. At present, hematological malignancies are analyzed and classified on the basis of morphologic characteristics, cell surface markers, cytogenetic aberrations and molecular markers. Unfortunately, in most cases, standard criteria are not sufficient for both an early diagnosis and a complete classification. The latter issue hampers an optimal therapeutic choice for these patients that often display heterogeneous clinical outcomes or responses to therapy. This heterogeneity has determined a need for improved methods of analysis and novel markers for diagnosis and classification of these malignancies. Non coding RNAs act as master regulators of numerous biological processes including epigenetic response, apoptosis and cell cycle. The recent advances in cancer research have led to a spreading out in the clinical use of genomic information; in fact, several studies are investigating the prominent role of both miRNAs and lncRNAs in hematopoietic differentiation and proliferation, as well as in the development of various hematological malignancies. These investigations are mainly aimed at researching new therapeutic opportunities that could boost a reduced risk of adverse events in normal tissues. Moreover, not less important, there is also a growing interest in determining how ncRNAs are associated with clinical features. In this review we focus on the aberrant ncRNAs expression in the most common forms of blood cancers, each of which exhibits a unique signature in comparison to normal counterparts. In addition to their regulatory role and in virtue of the well known ncRNAs' capacity of modulating signal and pathway networks, herein we discuss both miRNAs' and lncRNAs' potential as new powerful biomarkers for efficient diagnosis and prediction of response for patients with hematological malignancies.