Abstract

Cancer is a multifactorial disease and a wealth of information has enabled us to develop a better understanding of the heterogeneous nature of cancer. Deregulation of spatio-temporally controlled signaling cascades played a central role in cancer progression. NRF2-driven signaling has attracted significant attention because of its ability to dualistically regulate cancer progression. Context-dependent diametrically opposed roles of NRF2-induced signaling are exciting. More importantly, non-coding RNA (ncRNA) mediated regulation of NRF2 and interplay between NRF2 and ncRNAs have added new layers of complexity to already intricate nature of NRF2 signaling. There is a gradual enrichment in the existing pool of knowledge related to interplay between microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in different cancers. However, surprisingly, there are no clues about interplay between circular RNAs and NRF2 in various cancers. Future studies must converge on the identification of additional important lncRNAs and circular RNAs, which regulated NRF2-driven signaling or conversely NRF2 transcriptionally controlled their expression to regulate various stages of cancer.

Significance Statement Recently, many researchers have focused on the NRF2-driven signaling in cancer progression. Some possible strong interactions between NRF2-driven signaling and non-coding RNAs are still not clear. Future studies must be designed on critical molecules which take place NRF2-driven signaling and their expression to regulate various stages of cancer.