Diagnostic and prognostic potential of tissue and circulating long non-coding RNAs in colorectal tumors

Figure 1 The most important tissue and circulating long non-coding RNA candidates with diagnostic and prognostic potential in colorectal tumors. Long non-coding RNA (lncRNAs) upregulated in adenoma or colorectal cancer (CRC) samples compared to normal controls are marked with ↑, while the downregulated lncRNAs are depicted with ↓. Potential prognostic markers detectable both in tissue and blood specimens are highlighted in the right, where ↑ refers to lncRNAs whose higher levels were found to be associated with poor prognosis (CRNDE, HOTAIR, CCAT2, BLACAT1, CCAT1, NEAT1, 91H, HIF1A-AS1), while the low expression of lncRNA marked with ↓(GAS5) can be a predictor of worse disease outcome in CRC patients. In case of the lncRNAs written without frame (BANCR, BCAR4, LOC285194, RP11-462C24.1, UCA1), diverse, sometimes controversial expression data are available in the scientific literature.