Abstract

Bladder cancer (BC) is the sixth most common cause of cancer; BC risk increases with age and is more common among men than women. Upon diagnosis, the 5-year relative survival rate for patients is approximately 77%. The treatment options available for bladder cancer include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, targeted therapy, and surgery. Despite the advances in therapeutically novel approaches, BC remains an important problem of public health. Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) is defined as non-protein-coding RNA molecule longer than 200 nucleotides. Recent findings have highlighted that lncRNA contributes to the regulation of multiple signaling pathways in bladder cancer, suggesting that lncRNA exerts its roles during the biological processes of tumorigenesis, tumor proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, invasion, migration, and stemness. In our laboratory, we described a family of mitochondrial long non-coding RNAs containing stem-loop structures, named sense and antisense. These transcripts are found outside the organelle, in the cytosol and nucleus in normal and tumor cells, and are differentially expressed according to proliferative status of cells. The antisense transcript seems to be a novel target for BC treatment based in modified antisense oligonucleotides. In this chapter, the novel biology and role of these RNAs as therapeutical targets will be discussed.