The nexus of long noncoding RNAs, splicing factors, alternative splicing and their modulations

ABSTRACT

The process of alternative splicing (AS) is widely deregulated in a variety of cancers. Splicing is dependent upon splicing factors. Recently, several long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to regulate AS by directly/indirectly interacting with splicing factors. This review focuses on the regulation of AS by lncRNAs through their interaction with splicing factors. AS mis-regulation caused by either mutation in splicing factors or deregulated expression of splicing factors and lncRNAs has been shown to be involved in cancer development and progression, making aberrant splicing, splicing factors and lncRNA suitable targets for cancer therapy. This review also addresses some of the current approaches used to target AS, splicing factors and lncRNAs. Finally, we discuss research challenges, some of the unanswered questions in the field and provide recommendations to advance understanding of the nexus of lncRNAs, AS and splicing factors in cancer.

KEYWORDS:

• Alternative splicing
• splicing factors
• long noncoding RNA
• cancer
• antisense oligonucleotides

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Zahava Siegfried for critical reading of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank Prof. Rotem Karni of Hebrew university for being the inspiration for writing this review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data availability is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. No datasets have been used in the current study.

Author contributions

PM and SS wrote the manuscript. MM prepared the figures. RK and JAS edited the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work and the authors are, in part, supported by grants from the Ramanujan fellowship to PM (RJF/2021/000123).