The emergence of long non-coding RNAs in the tumorigenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third cause of cancer-related death worldwide. However, the treatments for HCC are limited, and most of them are only available to the early stage. In the later stages, traditional chemotherapy has only marginal effects and may include toxicity. Thus, the identification of new predictive markers is urgently needed. New targets for non-conventional treatments will help to accelerate research on the molecular pathogenesis of HCC. A new class of transcripts, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), has recently been found to be pervasively transcribed in the human genome. Aberrant expression of several lncRNAs was found to be involved in the tumorigenesis of HCC. In this review, we describe the possible molecular mechanisms that underlie lncRNA expression changes in HCC, as well as potential future applications of lncRNA research in the diagnosis and treatment of HCC.