MicroRNAs in solid cancer: from biomarkers to therapeutic targets

MicroRNA s (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNA s 18–25 nucleotides in length that downregulate gene expression during various crucial cell processes such as apoptosis, differentiation and development. Changes in the expression profiles of miRNAs have been observed in a variety of human solid tumors. Functional studies indicate that miRNAs act as tumor suppressors and oncogenes. These findings significantly extend concept of molecular pathogenesis of cancer and have shown great potential for miRNA as a novel class of therapeutic targets. Several investigations have also described the ability of miRNA expression profiles to predict prognosis and response to selected treatments in cancer patients, and support diagnosis of origin among cancer of unknown primary site. miRNAs’ occurrence has been repeatedly observed also in blood serum and plasma, and miRNAs as novel minimally invasive biomarkers have indicated reasonable sensitivity for cancer detection. This lecture covers introduction to miRNA biology, miRNA involvement in the hallmarks of cancer, the knowledge regarding miRNAs functioning in pathogenetic signaling pathways and their potential to serve as disease biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets in the colorectal cancer, renal cell carcinoma and glioblastoma in order to our recent observations.

Supported by Internal Grant Agency of Czech Ministry of Health: NT13549-4/2012, NT13860 4/2012, NT11214-4/2010 and NT13514- 4/2012.