Figure 1.

A simplified role of exosomal non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in developing cancer cells’ resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. Chemotherapeutic agent-sensitive cancer cells may become drug-resistant through exosomal transport of ncRNAs. Chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells can release exosomes with high expression of ncRNAs, which can be taken up by chemotherapeutic-sensitive cancer cells, changing the properties of the cells and making them chemotherapeutic resistant (A). The primary mechanism responsible for this phenomenon is sponging microRNAs (miRs) by exosomal long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs) and, consequently, increasing the expression of oncogenes responsible for the acquisition of chemoresistance (B). The two main consequences of these changes at the cellular level are increased proliferation and the inhibition of cancer cell apoptosis. Therefore, tumor growth in vivo and the ineffectiveness of chemotherapeutic agent therapy in oncological patients are associated with increased survival and invasiveness of tumor cells (C). Targeted cancer therapy may eventually be based on interactions in the lncRNA/circRNA-miR-mRNA axis.