Long noncoding RNA HOTAIR involvement in cancer.

Evidences have been provided that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) act as key molecules in epigenetic regulation and are involved in the development process of cancer in recent studies. HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR), a long intergenic noncoding RNA (lincRNA), functions as a molecular scaffold to link and target two histone modification complexes PRC2 and LSD1, then reprograms chromatin states by couples histone H3K27 methylation and H3K4 demethylation for epigenetic gene silencing to promote cancer metastasis. HOTAIR, regarded as an oncogene, is pervasively overexpressed in most solid cancers and correlated with tumor invasion, progression, metastasis, and poor prognosis, and HOTAIR has been proven to play a critical role in most biological process of cancer and would be a potential new target in cancer therapy.