食管癌长非编码RNA与肿瘤干细胞的研究进展

Research progress of long noncoding RNA and cancer stem cells in esophageal cancer

食管癌在全世界范围内是一种常见的恶性肿瘤,尽管目前已有多种有效的治疗手段,食管癌仍保持很高的死亡率及很短的总生存期及无疾病生存期,这是由于目前仍乏对于食管癌的主要发病机制及有效生物预测指标的认识。长非编码RNA lncRNA是一类长度超过200个核苷酸的内源性RNA,这种RNA不具有编码蛋白质的功能。许多研究表明,lncRNA是功能基因组元件,在致癌的过程中起着关键作用。lncRNA可以在多个水平上发挥作用,形成一个复杂的分子网络,可以直接或间接地调节参与肿瘤发生基因的表达。其中一种调节肿瘤发生发展的重要发病机制便是肿瘤干细胞理论,肿瘤干细胞理论认为肿瘤组织存在极少量肿瘤干细胞,具备自我更新及无限增殖能力,在启动肿瘤的发生和维持肿瘤的发展中起着至关重要的作用。目前已有多项研究表明食管癌lncRNA可以调控肿瘤的自我更新、耐药性、肿瘤启动等,本文就食管癌lncRNA与肿瘤干细胞相关作用机制的研究进展进行综述。

Esophageal cancer is a common malignant tumor worldwide.Although there are many effective treatments,esophageal cancer still maintains a high mortality rate and a short overall survival and disease-free survival,which is due to the lack of understanding of the main pathogenesis and effective biological predictors of esophageal cancer.Long noncoding RNA(lncRNA)is a kind of endogenous RNA with lengths exceeding 200 nucleotides that are not translated into protein.Many studies have shown that lncRNA is a functional genomic element and plays a key role in major carcinogenesis.lncRNA can play a role at multiple levels to form a complex molecular network that directly or indirectly regulate the expression of genes involved in tumorigenesis.One of the important pathogenesis of regulating the occurrence and development of tumors is cancer stem cell theory,which believes that there are a small number of tumor stem cells in tumor tissue that have the ability of self-renewal and unlimited proliferation and play a crucial role in initiating the occurrence of tumors and maintaining the development of tumors.At present,a number of studies have shown that esophageal cancer lncRNA can regulate tumor self-renewal,drug resistance,tumor initiation,and so on.This paper reviews the research progress of the mechanism of esophageal cancer lncRNA and cancer stem cells.