Title:Harnessing the Potential of Long Non-coding RNAs to Manage Metabolic Diseases
Volume: 27
Issue: 35
Author(s): Khushdeep Bandesh , Daisy Masih , Nirjhar Bhattacharyya and Dwaipayan Bharadwaj *
Affiliation:
- Systems Genomics Laboratory, School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-110067,India
Keywords:
Epigenetics, lncRNAs, RNA therapeutics, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, neurological disease, human
metabolism.
Abstract: Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are functionally versatile molecules that regulate gene expression
at all levels of biological organization. RNA modulation, at the moment, has emerged as a powerful therapeutic
technique to treat human diseases. Lately, lncRNAs have been acknowledged as key players in human
metabolism and, indeed, implicated in the etiology of many common diseases other than cancers, where they
can perhaps serve as reliable markers to determine disease status or assess outcomes of an intervention. Here, in
this review, we cite examples of such lncRNAs, discuss their mechanistic role in human diseases and their genetic
association, quote potential biomarkers found in human blood, summarize the methods for therapeutic targeting
lncRNAs and examine the progress of lncRNA based drugs in clinical trials. Thus, we propose that lncRNAs
serve as both a biomarker and an effective therapeutic target with promising clinical utility to manage human
metabolic diseases.
