Xu W, Zhou G, Wang H, et al. - Researchers investigated blood-based markers for the early identification of colorectal cancer (CRC) and determined whether these have efficiency in distinguishing healthy controls, patients with polyps and adenomas and cancer patients. In a bioinformatics database, ZFAS1, SNHG11, LINC00909 and LINC00654 were examined and screened. Thereafter, they gathered clinical plasma samples to perform a preliminary small-scale analysis and for further large-scale verification. They found that the diagnostic performance displayed by the combination of ZFAS1, SNHG11, LINC00909 and LINC00654 for CRC was high (AUC: 0.937); particularly for early-stage disease (AUC: 0.935). For discriminating patient groups with different stages of colon disease, good performance of a panel including these four lncRNAs was reported. The diagnostic ability of SNHG11 to detect precancerous lesions and early-stage tumour formation was the greatest. Findings are suggestive of the possible role of SNHG11 as a new therapeutic target for the treatment of CRC and as a potential biomarker for the early identification of CRC.