Potential clinical application of lncRNAs in pediatric cancer

Abstract

Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children globally. The childhood cancer burden is more than 80% in the low- and middle-income countries, including India. In contrast to cancer in adults, the number of children diagnosed with cancer is far less but the children who survive cancer are more likely to face the negative consequences of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in their lifetime. The common childhood cancers include leukemia, neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, retinoblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, and Wilms tumor. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a pervasive subset of noncoding RNAs. The high throughput sequencing studies estimate the number of lncRNAs to be more than 100, 000 but hardly 1% of them have been functionally characterized. The lncRNAs have a tissue-specific expression and a majority of them are functionally dysregulated in numerous physiological and pathological conditions, including cancer, thereby making them attractive therapeutic targets. Recently, their role has also been described in pediatric cancers. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge about dysregulated lncRNAs, their potential as biomarker and therapeutic targets, and their underlying molecular mechanisms in pediatric cancer. � 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.