The Roles of Extracellular Vesicles and Circulating Noncoding RNAs in Laryngeal Cancer and Their Implication on Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Therapy

Laryngeal cancer is a common head and neck cancer with a global distribution. Late-stage presentation is related to poor overall survival. Due to the advancement in treatment modalities, chemoradiotherapy has become the major form of treatment in most laryngeal cancer patients. Treatment failure with medication/radiation results in surgery, and associated disability is unfortunately unavoidable. Although early detection is the key to effective treatment, there is currently no reliable screening test or biomarker for early diagnosis and predicting prognosis and treatment outcomes. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are microvesicles that have been associated with pathological tumor processes by intercellular communication, especially vesicles with noncoding RNAs contents. In this review, the functions and roles of EVs in laryngeal cancer from both preclinical and clinical experiments have been comprehensively summarized; clinical studies in circulating noncoding RNAs have also been included. Preclinical studies into laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC)-derived EVs showed significant modulation in tumor progression. Clinical studies reporting on the roles of EVs and circulating noncoding RNAs were mainly applicable to diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of LSCC. The information provided in this review could be beneficial in encouraging more investigation into EVs and circulating noncoding RNAs in LSCC to warrant their use as novel biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of the disease and potentially as a new therapeutic approach for LSCC.