The cross talk between long, non-coding RNAs and microRNAs in gastric cancer

Gastric cancer is one of the most common malignant diseases and remains the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Although great effort has been made during the past decades to facilitate the early detection and treatment of gastric cancer, the prognosis is not yet satisfactory and the underlying molecular mechanisms of gastric cancer pathogenesis are not fully understood. Meanwhile, non-coding RNAs have been established as key players in regulating various biological and pathological processes, such as cell-cycle progression, chromatin remodeling, gene transcription, and posttranscriptional processing. Furthermore, numerous studies have also revealed a complicated interplay among different species of non-coding RNAs; therefore, the cross-regulation between long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) has begun to emerge. This lncRNA-miRNA cross talk, which has attracted increasing attention in recent years, is involved in a great number of human diseases including gastric cancer. In this review, we summarize the latest research progress of the interactions between lncRNAs and miRNAs, highlighting their influences on the development and progression of gastric cancer to provide novel approaches for cancer diagnosis and treatment.