MicroRNAs in Autoimmunity and Hematological Malignancies

Abstract

Autoimmunity and hematological malignancies are often concomitant in patients. A causal bidirectional relationship exists between them. Loss of immunological tolerance with inappropriate activation of the immune system, likely due to environmental and genetic factors, can represent a breeding ground for the appearance of cancer cells and, on the other hand, blood cancers are characterized by imbalanced immune cell subsets that could support the development of the autoimmune clone. Considerable effort has been made for understanding the proteins that have a relevant role in both processes; however, literature advances demonstrate that microRNAs (miRNAs) surface as the epigenetic regulators of those proteins and control networks linked to both autoimmunity and hematological malignancies. Here we review the most up-to-date findings regarding the miRNA-based molecular mechanisms that underpin autoimmunity and hematological malignancies.

Extracellular Vesicles Derived Human-miRNAs Modulate the Immune System in Type 1 Diabetes

“…One of the most common mechanisms proposed in autoimmunity is an innate immune cell hyper-activation, such as dendritic cells (DC), that can overstimulate T lymphocytes (Di Marco et al, 2018). TLR7/8 activation in DC triggers the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines (Morse and Horwitz, 2017;Salvi et al, 2018) and immune cells intercellular interactions, resulting in expanded T-cell-clones and auto-immune risk phenotype, in both mice and humans (Ara et al, 2018;Morawski and Bolland, 2018).…”

Free circulating mircoRNAs support the diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis in patients with hematologic malignancies and neutropenia

“…With the significant developments achieved in the field of oncology, nosocomial etiologies are continuously associated with high mortality and increased susceptibility to IFDs 12 . The prophylactic use of available azoles during anticancer therapy has led to a reduction of Candida blood stream infections however the growing antifungal resistance especially in the case of Aspergillus fumigatus and A. terreus has emerged as a global health issue 12,[36][37][38][39][40][41] . In Europe the genus Aspergillus accounts for 12-28% of all fungal isolates [41][42][43][44] .…”

“…Antimicrobial prophylaxis has already been estimated as an important prognostic factor of bacteremia in several studies 12,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70] . Due to a more intense antifungal prophylactic strategy in C2 there were only two episodes (P35, P32) with recurrent fever developing non-infected SIRS.…”

“…Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) driven by infection and is a leading cause of mortality in patients after intensive cytotoxic therapy significantly decreasing the survival rate with more than 50% 12 , 54 , 55 . The prevention of infection has become a major goal however there is no widely accepted standard for antimicrobial prophylaxis 17 , 27 , 56 .…”

“…Invasive aspergillosis (IA) can be frequently associated mainly with acute myeloid and lymphoid (AML, ALL) leukemia and occurs primarily in the lung 9 . The well-established risk factors include underlying malignancy, immunosuppression and profound neutropenia 10 – 12 .…”