MicroRNAs in pancreatic malignancy: Progress and promises

Abstract

Despite progress in recent years, pancreatic cancer still remains a major clinical challenge. Its incidence and mortality rates have been on consistent rise, thus underscoring the critical need for novel diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic tools for its effective management. Recent studies have demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs/miRs) are deregulated in a variety of malignancies, including pancreatic cancer, and play a significant role in the initiation, progression and metastasis. Furthermore, their vital involvement in the therapeutic resistance of cancer has also been established. Hence, there has been enormous interest worldwide in investigating the roles of miRNAs in pancreatic cancer pathogenesis and exploiting their utility for clinical benefit. In this review, we summarize current knowledge on the role of miRNAs in pancreatic cancer and discuss their potential use as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, and as novel targets for development of effective therapeutic strategies.

Mining Exosomal Genes for Pancreatic Cancer Targets

“…In PDAC, the involvement of different microRNAs including miR-10a, miR-21, miR-34a miR-150, miR-155, miR-203, miR-210, miR-212-3p let-7, miR-744, miR-1246 and others are documented in several studies (64). Exosomal microRNA such as miR-212-3p, miR-203, miR-21 have been shown to enhance invasion, modulate immune response and drug resistance (65,66).…”

Disease pathways at the Rat Genome Database Pathway Portal: genes in context¿a network approach to understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease

“…In addition to variant genes and their associated dysfunctional pathways, deregulations stemming from sources other than protein coding genes such as those associated with microRNAs (miRNAs) and other non-coding elements or from sources other than sequence variation such as those at the epigenetic level can and do contribute to the disease phenotype. Abnormal chromatin modification as well as the up-and downregulated expression of miRNA in tumor tissues compared to normal ones have been reported [10,12]. Systems level, high-throughput, and -omics approaches to the study and understanding of disease initiation and progression are being considered [13,14].…”

“…miRNAs, which primarily inhibit the translation of target genes, are aberrantly expressed in pancreatic cancer as well as other cancer types. Many miRNAs are shown to be both up-and down-regulated in pancreatic cancer resulting in multiple effects such as chemoresistance, proliferation, survival, invasion, and metastasis [12]. Early detection of pancreatic cancer has proven difficult.…”

Regulation of the expression of zinc finger protein genes by microRNAs enriched within acute lymphoblastic leukemia-derived microvesicles

“…Over the past years, increasing evidence has indicated that altered expression profiles of miRNAs are present in several diseases, in particular in malignant neoplasms (Ikeda and Tagawa, 2014;Srivastava et al, 2014), suggesting that miRNAs are involved in the pathogenesis of malignancies. As pivotal regulators of gene expression at the post-transcriptional level, miRNAs are capable of binding to the 3'-untranslated regions (3'-UTRs) of target mRNAs, inducing the repression of mature mRNA molecular levels (Guo et al, 2010).…”