Noncoding RNA in drug resistant sarcoma

// Xiaoyang Li 1, 2 , Jacson K. Shen 2 , Francis J. Hornicek 2 , Tao Xiao 1 and Zhenfeng Duan 2 1 Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410011, China 2 Sarcoma Biology Laboratory, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 02114, USA Correspondence to: Tao Xiao, email: xiaotaoxyl@163.com Zhenfeng Duan, email: zduan@mgh.harvard.edu Keywords: noncoding RNA (ncRNA), microRNA (miR), long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), drug resistance, sarcoma Received: May 04, 2017      Accepted: June 26, 2017      Published: July 06, 2017 ABSTRACT Sarcomas are a group of malignant tumors that arise from mesenchymal origin. Despite significant development of multidisciplinary treatments for sarcoma, survival rates have reached a plateau. Chemotherapy has been extensively used for sarcoma treatment; however, the development of drug resistance is a major obstacle limiting the success of many anticancer agents. Sarcoma biology has traditionally focused on genomic and epigenomic deregulation of protein-coding genes to identify the therapeutic potential for reversing drug resistance. New and more creative approaches have found the involvement of noncoding RNAs, including microRNAs and long noncoding RNAs in drug resistant sarcoma. In this review, we discuss the current knowledge of noncoding RNAs characteristics and the regulated genes involved in drug resistant sarcoma, and focus on their therapeutic potential in the future.