AUTHOR=Bermúdez Mercedes , Aguilar-Medina Maribel , Lizárraga-Verdugo Erik , Avendaño-Félix Mariana , Silva-Benítez Erika , López-Camarillo Cesar , Ramos-Payán Rosalío 

TITLE=LncRNAs as Regulators of Autophagy and Drug Resistance in Colorectal Cancer

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2019

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2019.01008

DOI=10.3389/fonc.2019.01008

ISSN=2234-943X

ABSTRACT=Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignancy with 1.8 million cases in 2018. Autophagy helps to maintain an adequate cancer microenvironment by providing nutritional supplement under starvation and hypoxic conditions. Additionally, most of the cases of CRC are unresponsive to chemotherapy, representing a significant challenge for cancer therapy.
Recently, therapy-induced autophagy has been shown as a novel mechanism of resistance to anticancer agents. In this regard, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) analysis are important for cancer detection, progression, diagnosis, therapy response and prognostic values. With increasing development of quantitative detection techniques, lncRNAs derived from patients’ non-invasive samples (i.e. blood, stools, and urine) has become into a novel approach in precision oncology. 
Tumorspecific GAS5, HOTAIR, H19 and MALAT are novels CRC related lncRNAs detected in patients. Nonetheless, the effect and mechanism of lncRNAs in cancer autophagy and chemoresistance have not been extensively characterized. 
Chemoresistance and autophagy are relevant for cancer treatment and lncRNAs play a pivotal role in resistance acquisition for several drugs. LncRNAs such as HAGLROS, KCNQ1OT1 and H19 are examples of lncRNA related to chemoresistance leaded by autophagy. 
Finally, clinical implications of lncRNAs in CRC are relevant, since they have been associated with tumor differentiation, tumor size, histological grade, histological types, Dukes staging, degree of differentiation, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, recurrent free survival and overall survival.