Zhang H, et al. - In patients with colorectal cancer, researchers studied the functional roles and regulatory mechanisms of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) as well as their clinical potential as biomarkers. They used TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) database and identified 62 lncRNAs, 30miRNAs, and 59 mRNAs to comprise the ceRNA network (fold change > 2, P < 0.01). Findings suggested a possible involvement of the target genes of the ceRNA network in the pathways associated with cancer, including the signaling pathway that regulates the pluripotency of stem cells, wnt signaling pathway, hippo signaling pathway, basal cell carcinoma, and colorectal cancer. They found a close association of five (H19, MIR31HG, HOTAIR, WT1-AS, and LINC00488) out of 62 lncRNAs, with overall survival (OS). In colorectal cancer, the five-lncRNA model could serve as an independent prognostic model. They obtained validation for the model in the GSE38832 dataset. A risk score based on the five lncRNAs was developed. Poor survival rates were observed in patients with high-risk scores. Better prediction of survival probabilities could be achieved by combining the risk score and other clinicopathological features.