engleski

CIRCULATING microRNAs AS DIAGNOSTIC AND PREDICTIVE CANCER BIOMARKERS

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of evolutionarily conserved small non-coding RNAs that are involved in the regulation of gene expression and protein translation, and they play critical roles in the cell’s growth and differentiation. Various cancers were shown to leave specific miRNA fingerprints in the blood of patients suggesting that cell-free miRNAs could serve as non-invasive biomarkers for the detection or monitoring of cancer and putative therapeutic targets. Since miRNAs are released to extracellular spaces, and are extremely stable in body fluids the use of miRNAs in the biomarker field is well founded. However, currently their use is limited by conflicting data between studies due to lack of standardisation in methodology and the lack of suitable reference genes for normalisation. It is unlikely that any single miRNA will achieve the desired level of diagnostic or prognostic accuracy, as evidence is increasing that increased levels of particular miRNAs can be associated with several different types of tumour. A precondition to developing circulating miRNA-based diagnostics is the ability to quantify miRNAs from plasma and serum with sufficient sensitivity and precision. The precise measurement of these miRNAs has been associated with many challenges, including those related to pre-analytic variation such as specimen collection, factors influencing RNA extraction efficiency and technical issues involved in successful qRT-PCR, data analysis and normalisation as well. This presentation summarizes recent progress in the use of circulating miRNAs as diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive biomarkers of carcinoma or indeed as targets for cancer treatment.

: microRNA; biomarker; cancer; prognostic; diagnostic

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