MicroRNAs: Biogenesis, Functions and Potential Biomarkers for Early Screening, Prognosis and Therapeutic Molecular Monitoring of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Abstract

According to reports published, the aberrant expression of microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of 19–25 nucleotide-long small non-coding RNAs, is responsible for human cancers, including nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC). The dysregulation of miRNAs that act either as a tumor suppressor or oncogene, leading to a wide range of NPC pathogenesis pathways, includes the proliferation, invasion, migration as well as the metastasis of NPC cells. This article reviews and highlights recent advances in the studies of miRNAs in NPC, with a specific demonstration of the functions of miRNA, especially circulating miRNAs, in the pathway of NPC pathogenesis. Additionally, the possible use of miRNAs as early screening and prognostic biomarkers and for therapeutic molecular monitoring has been extensively studied.

An Insight into miR-1290: An Oncogenic miRNA with Diagnostic Potential

“…In the canonical biosynthesis pathway, most primary miRNAs transcripts (pri-miRNA) are synthesized by polymerase II in association with transcription factors and epigenetic regulators from its own promoter or the promoter that is shared with a host gene [11]. Pri-miRNAs, which have a hairpin structure ranging in length from hundreds to thousands of base pairs (bp), are processed in two steps by two endoribonucleases, Drosha and Dicer [12].…”

Circulating microRNAs as the Potential Diagnostic and Prognostic Biomarkers for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

“…The majority of post-transcriptional regulation of miRNA target genes is accomplished through the binding of miRNAs to their target sequences at the 3′-untranslated region (3′-UTR), eventually resulting in the degradation and/or repression of mRNA [24][25][26]34] (Figure 1). Additionally, miRNAs attach with other regions of target genes, including 5′-UTR, as well as promoter and coding regions [24,35]. According to Lewis et al (2005), more than a third of human genes appear to have been selectively pressured to keep their miRNA seed pairing [36].…”

“…According to the data of miRbase (https://www.mirbase.org/, accessed on 30 April 2022 there are more than 4.700 known human miRNAs (within the prefix hsa-) that have been identified. The cellular biogenesis of miRNAs involves both the canonical pathway and noncanonical pathway [24,25,38]. Mature miRNA originates from primary miRNA (pri-miRNA) and precursor miRNA (pre-miRNA).…”

“…Many efforts are now being undertaken to determine prospective biomarkers for the early diagnosis and screening of NPC that are based on the detection of microRNAs (miRNAs), etiological factors of tumorigenesis [ 2 , 24 ]. It is becoming increasingly evident that the aberrant expression of miRNAs, which function as oncogenic miRNAs, known as “oncomirs”, and tumor suppressor miRNAs, resulting in numerous cancer-associated phenomena, such as anti-apoptosis, proliferation, migration, metastasis, and so on, are responsible for numerous human pathogeneses, including nasopharyngeal tumorigenesis [ 12 , 14 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Thus far, many researchers have studied to identify the signature of miRNA expression in nasopharyngeal tumorigenesis [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ].…”

Simultaneously both expression of LMP-1 and methylation of E-cadherin: Molecular biomarker in stage IV of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients

“…A nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a prevalent nasopharyngeal malignant tumor with remarkable differences in distribution that gravitates toward Southern Asia. Even though many improvements in NPC therapy have been achieved, the diagnosis at an advanced stage led to reducing the success rate of treatment as well as the survival of patients [ 1 ]. Thus, early screening and diagnosis represents beneficial opportunities to increase the survival of patients as well as the effects of nasopharyngeal cancer treatment.…”