Abstract
Head and neck cancers (HNCs) rank as the sixth common and the seventh leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, with an estimated incidence of 600,000 cases and 40–50% mortality rate every year. Radiotherapy is a common local therapeutic modality for HNC mainly through the function of ionizing radiation, with approximately 60% of patients treated with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy. Although radiotherapy is more advanced and widely used in clinical practice, the 5-year overall survival rates of locally advanced HNCs are still less than 40%. HNC cell resistance to radiotherapy remains one of the major challenges to improve the overall survival in HNC patients. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are newly discovered functional small RNA molecules that are different from messenger RNAs, which can be translated into a protein. Many previous studies have reported the dysregulation and function of ncRNAs in HNC. Importantly, researchers reported that several ncRNAs were also dysregulated in radiotherapy-sensitive or radiotherapy-resistant HNC tissues compared with the normal cancer tissues. They found that ectopically elevating or knocking down expression of some ncRNAs could significantly influence the response of HNC cancer cells to radiotherapy, indicating that ncRNAs could regulate the sensitivity of cancer cells to radiotherapy. The implying mechanism for ncRNAs in regulating radiotherapy sensitivity may be due to its roles on affecting DNA damage sensation, inducing cell cycle arrest, regulating DNA damage repair, modulating cell apoptosis, etc. Additionally, clinical studies reported that in situ ncRNA expression in HNC tissues may predict the response of radiotherapy, and circulating ncRNA from body liquid serves as minimally invasive therapy-responsive and prognostic biomarkers in HNC. In this review, we aimed to summarize the current function and mechanism of ncRNAs in regulating the sensitivity of HNC cancer cells to radiotherapy and comprehensively described the state of the art on the role of ncRNAs in the prognosis prediction, therapy monitoring, and prediction of response to radiotherapy in HNC.
Highlights
Head and neck cancers (HNCs) rank as the sixth common and the seventh leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, with an estimated incidence of 600,000 cases and 40–50% mortality rate every year (Ferlay et al, 2015; Economopoulou et al, 2016)
Radiotherapy is more advanced and widely used in clinical practice, 5-year overall survival rates of locally advanced HNC are still less than 40% (Pignon et al, 2009)
Cancer cell resistance to radiotherapy remains one of the major challenges to improve the overall survival in HNC patients
Summary
Head and neck cancers (HNCs) rank as the sixth common and the seventh leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, with an estimated incidence of 600,000 cases and 40–50% mortality rate every year (Ferlay et al, 2015; Economopoulou et al, 2016). Radiotherapy is a common local therapeutic modality for cancers mainly through the function of ionizing radiation. Radiotherapy is one of the major treatment modalities for HNC, with approximately 60% of patients treated with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy (Berrington de Gonzalez et al, 2011). Many high-quality clinical studies have reported that radiotherapy or concurrent chemoradiotherapy could improve the survival for patients with early-stage HNC or locally advanced HNC (Bonner et al, 2010; Caudell et al, 2017; Lacas et al, 2017; Nichols et al, 2019). Radiotherapy is more advanced and widely used in clinical practice, 5-year overall survival rates of locally advanced HNC are still less than 40% (Pignon et al, 2009). Cancer cell resistance to radiotherapy remains one of the major challenges to improve the overall survival in HNC patients
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