Dear Colleagues,

Despite substantial progress in cancer treatment in recent years, mostly related to the breakthrough and development of new targeted therapies, the overall effectiveness of most cancer treatments is still far from being satisfactory. Therefore, new cancer biomarkers and new targets for cancer treatments are still needed. Among the most promising cancer biomarkers as well as potential targets for cancer therapies are different classes of non-coding RNA (ncRNAs), including microRNAs (miRNAs), long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), and circular RNAs (circRNAs) that act as key regulators of gene expression. Important factors that make ncRNAs (especially classes of short non-coding RNAs) promising biomarkers are the presence and stability of cancer-derived ncRNAs, as extracellular circulating RNAs, in easily accessible body fluids, including blood.

An important aspect of cancer development is accumulation in cancer genome of numerous somatic mutations. Although only a few of these mutations are variants that drive cancer, i.e., loss-of-function mutations in tumor suppressor genes and gain-of-function mutations in oncogenes, many such driver mutations have been identified in protein-coding genes and are used as important cancer biomarkers and personalized targets in cancer treatment. However, very little (close to nothing) is known about the somatic variants in ncRNA genes. Therefore, in this Special Issue, we would like to focus especially on submissions related to the somatic variation of ncRNA genes, including studies developing new molecular, statistical or computational tools for identification and characterization of non-coding driver mutations, but we will also welcome studies related to identification, characterization of function, and utilization of ncRNAs in different aspects of cancer.

Prof. Piotr Kozłowski
Guest Editor

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• microRNA (miRNA)
• long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)
• circular RNA (circRNA)
• circulating RNA
• somatic mutations
• driver mutations
• lung cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, head and neck cancer, melanoma, prostate cancer
• biomarkers
• competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs)