Alisa Petkevich

By Alisa Petkevich, Aleksandr Abramov and Vadim Pospelov

miRNAs are small noncoding RNAs, which are involved in epigenetic regulation of gene expression. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), although not being at the top of most widespread cancers, nevertheless, remains among cancers with the most lethal cases. The chapter is dedicated to the epigenetic aspect of HCC development, namely the role of miRNA in this process. Being small and noncoding RNAs, they have a huge and significant function in gene regulation. This chapter will briefly cover following questions: miRNA biogenesis and function, metabolic and signaling pathways disrupted in HCC with a significant miRNA involvement, and main miRNAs contributing to HCC development and their targets.

Part of the book: Liver Cancer

By Alisa Petkevich, Aleksandr Abramov and Vadim Pospelov

This chapter reviewed the various sources of exosomes and their characteristics. Exosomes, which in the context of the proposed chapter are the synonym for extracellular vesicles up to 200 nm, play a pivotal role in cell to cell communication thus leading to the involvement of exosomes in inflammation and cancer development. This brings exosomes to the forefront of promising markers of a sub-clinical stage of the disease, which makes identifying exosome’s source and destination one of the main goals in exosome research. However, due to some biogenesis features and technological difficulties, which are discussed further, identification of a certain exosome’s address, or its specificity for a certain tissue or cell type, becomes a non-trivial task. The chapter covers the following questions: some of the main barriers on the way of testing tissue specificity hypothesis of exosomes, exosomes from synovial fluid and CSF and their features, exosomes from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) of different origins, and some membrane and cargo exosomal markers for tissue specificity and the prospect of exosomes as a drug delivery approach.

Part of the book: Exosomes

By Alisa Petkevich, Aleksandr Abramov and Vadim Pospelov

The goal of this chapter is to make an overview of the identified changes in lncRNAs expression levels accompanying cancer development. In general, the statistics allows us to establish a fact of association between the phenomenon and the process, but not to discover underlying mechanisms. In the context of the discussed topic, the phenomenon and the process are changes in lncRNA expression levels and cancer development. However, the underlying mechanisms, allowing such changes as in lncRNAs expression levels to have an impact on the cancer development, mostly remain uncertain and not clear. The first part of the chapter aims to shortly highlight the possible mechanisms of lncRNAs` impacts on the main processes of cancer development, like EMT, cancer cell progression, invasion, and metastasis. The second part examines in more detail the role of lncRNAs in some of the main nosology of oncological diseases: The participation of lncRNAs in the formation and development of breast cancer is considered, the main aspects of the importance of lncRNAs in lung cancer are presented, and studies on the participation of lncRNAs in the formation of colorectal cancer are described.

Part of the book: Noncoding RNA - The Dark Matter of the Genome [Working title]