Noncoding Way of the Metastasis

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization statistics, the second leading cause of death globally is cancer. Together with this, metastasis is viewed as the leading cause of cancer death in patients with the disease due to the lack of treatment modalities for malignant tumors. One of the key mechanisms related to cancer metastasis is the epithelial-mesenchymal transition which enables epithelial cancer cells to gain mesenchymal cancer cell properties with elevated migration and invasion capacity that make it easy to spread distant tissues and survive from harsh conditions. Studies indicate that metastatic cancer cells have a gene expression signature that ensures those cells have increased migratory capacity as well as increased survival rate in circulation. Recently, the relationship of metastasis with two types of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs), and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) has been getting attention. In this chapter, the role of miRNAs and lncRNAs and treatment strategies regarding the role of ncRNAs in metastasis biology will be evaluated.