Previous work showed that lncRNAs show higher tissue specifi

Previous work showed that lncRNAs show higher tissue specificity compared to mRNAs (). The work of Ching et al. supported this notion, and extended it by showing a reduction of specificity after malignant transformation, which is consistent with the de-differentiation status of cancers widely observed. They further show that lncRNA profiles in cancer Neuronal Signaling Library are highly specific to distinct cancer types, which pinpoint the predicting values of lncRNA expressions during cancer management. Numerous studies have demonstrated the potential of different lncRNAs for cancer diagnosis and prognosis, but the investigations are mainly focusing on a single cancer subtypes. Ching et al. take a global approach and identify six pan-cancer lncRNAs that robustly and accurately predict a wide range of cancer types. The six pan-cancer lncRNAs are also meritorious in predicting overall survival and relapse free survival in different cancer types. This finding should have laid the foundation for the development of biomarker screening platform for non-invasive testing of cancer incidence and outcome. More importantly, the pan-cancer analysis approach makes the translation of the finding more convenient, and shortens the timeframe of clinical trials because of the availability of a larger pool of patients. This may be an important step towards a more practical health-checking module in the future. On the other hand, the role of the putative pan-cancer lncRNAs identified in this study is potentially pivotal to cancer biology. It is interesting that their analysis suggested that well characterized lncRNAs such as HOTAIR does not meet the stringent selection criteria as a pan-cancer lncRNA, despite its frequently association and overexpression in several cancer types such as breast cancer (), liver cancer (), and pancreatic cancer (). Given the consistent expression pattern of pan-cancer lncRNAs across cancer types, it is interesting to extrapolate the possible roles of every one of them. Although as biomarkers, the pan-cancer lncRNAs may not necessarily link to any driver event as passenger genetic alterations can still demonstrate good value of prediction. Ching et al. has shown that they may regulate critical pro-cancerous effects such as cell proliferation and cell migration. Future study is warranted to unveil the underlying reason for their consistency across different cancer types. It is also of interest to understand the difference between these pan-cancer lncRNAs with other cancer-associated lncRNAs regarding their roles in cancer. As pointed out by the pioneers of the pan-cancer project, there are still limitations of analysis across cancer types in terms of inconsistent data acquisition method, incompatible clinical data across cancer types and false-positive discovery due to loosen statistical analysis (). Nonetheless, diversification of cancer is still proven to be the essential strategy in exploiting the uniqueness of every cancer types, as agreed by the Ching et al. As such, Slow-stop dna mutant is possible to pick the suitable candidates out of various targets for effective pharmaceutical intervention, as the current technology is limiting the selection of druggable targets.
The study performed by Pottegård and colleagues, published in this issue of (), falls within the clinically relevant scientific field which focuses on the variability in human drug response (). In some predisposed individuals, treated with a therapeutic dose of a drug, exaggerated responses (serious adverse events) can occur. These responses become evident when drugs, usually marketed at a limited number of doses, are broadly used in the population. Similarly, in some individuals drug therapies can result more effective than in the rest of exposed patients. The sources of heterogeneity among individuals in drug responses involve individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle for each person. The occurrence of these determinants in drug response has provided the basis for the development of precision medicine, i.e., prevention and treatment strategies that take individual variability into account (). While some advances in precision medicine have been made, the practice is not currently in use for most diseases.