Single-Cell Analysis May Shed New Lights on the Role of LncRNAs in Chemoresistance in Gastrointestinal Cancers

A major challenge in the treatment of cancer is dealing with intrinsic and/or acquired chemoresistance and with the development of metastatic lesions. The underlying mechanisms of chemoresistance are complex as a consequence of cancer heterogeneity, such as different tumour tissue origin, inter-tumour heterogeneity between patients and intra-tumour heterogeneity within cell populations of tumours. Classifying tumours according to gene expression-based molecular subtypes predicts the response to therapy and has been proposed to innovate towards personalized therapy. We here highlight the molecular subtypes observed in gastrointestinal cancers. In addition, we discuss the implication of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), a class of RNAs without protein-coding sequence and over 200 nucleotides long, in chemoresistance of gastrointestinal cancers.