Abstract
Liver cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The high frequency of recurrence and metastasis is the main reason for poor prognosis. Liver cancer stem cells (CSCs) have unlimited self-renewal, differentiation, and tumor-regenerating capacities. The maintenance of CSCs may account for the refractory features of liver cancer. Despite extensive investigations, the underlying regulatory mechanisms of liver CSCs remain elusive. miRNA and lncRNA, two major classes of the ncRNA family, can exert important roles in various biological processes, and their diverse regulatory mechanisms in CSC maintenance have acquired increasing attention. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of reviews summarizing these findings. Therefore, we systematically recapitulated the latest studies on miRNAs and lncRNAs in sustaining liver CSCs. Moreover, we highlighted the potential clinical application of these dysregulated ncRNAs as novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. This review not only sheds new light to fully understand liver CSCs but also provides valuable clues on targeting ncRNAs to block or eradicate CSCs in cancer treatment.
Highlights
Liver cancer is one of the most common malignancies and is ranked as the second leading cause of cancer-related death around the world [1]
Though numerous coding genes are reported to be involved in liver cancer stem cells (CSCs), these regulatory mechanisms are largely inadequate for the complete understanding and eradication of CSCs
We systematically summarize the latest findings of miRNAs and long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) on liver CSCs and illustrate their diverse mechanisms
Summary
Liver cancer is one of the most common malignancies and is ranked as the second leading cause of cancer-related death around the world [1]. Dysregulated expression of miRNAs and lncRNAs has been found in multiple cancers, and these aberrant ncRNAs have oncogenic or tumor suppressive functions as well as acting as coding genes [15]. Accumulating investigations have demonstrated that miRNAs and lncRNAs are essential for sustaining CSC properties in liver cancer, like miR-200b, miR-181, miR-1246, lncTCF-7, lnc-DANCR, lnc-PVT1, and so on [16,17,18,19,20,21]. These findings provide new insights regarding the complexity of liver CSCs and help foster an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We may develop ncRNA-based novel approaches to conquer CSCs in the future
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