Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Biol Chem. May 26, 2015; 6(2): 34-38
Published online May 26, 2015. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v6.i2.34
MicroRNAs as mediators of cardiovascular disease: Targets to be manipulated
Seahyoung Lee, Eunhyun Choi, Sung-Man Kim, Ki-Chul Hwang
Seahyoung Lee, Eunhyun Choi, Sung-Man Kim, Ki-Chul Hwang, Catholic Kwandong University International St. Mary’s Hospital, Incheon Metropolitan City 404-834, South Korea
Seahyoung Lee, Eunhyun Choi, Ki-Chul Hwang, Institute for Bio-Medical Convergence, College of Medicine, Catholic Kwandong University, Gangneung, Gangwon-do 210-701, South Korea
Author contributions: Lee S and Choi E wrote the manuscript; Kim SM and Hwang KC edited the manuscript.
Supported by A Korea Science and Engineering Foundation grant funded by the Korean government (MEST), NRF-2011-0019243 and NRF-2011-0019254; and a grant from the Korea Health 21 RD Project, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea, No. A120478.
Conflict-of-interest: All authors declare no conflict-of-interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Ki-Chul Hwang, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Director of the Institute for Bio-Medical Convergence, College of Medicine, Catholic Kwandong University, 24 Beomil-ro 579beon-gil, Gangneung, Gangwon-do 210-701, South Korea. kchwang@cku.ac.kr
Telephone: +82-32-2903883 Fax: +82-32-2902774
Received: January 28, 2015
Peer-review started: January 29, 2015
First decision: March 6, 2015
Revised: March 17, 2015
Accepted: April 16, 2015
Article in press: April 20, 2015
Published online: May 26, 2015
Processing time: 112 Days and 21.9 Hours
Abstract

Cardiovascular disease has been the leading cause of death worldwide for the last few decades. Even with the rapid progression of the biomedical field, conquering/managing cardiovascular disease is not an easy task because it is multifactorial disease. One of the key players of the development and progression of numerous diseases is microRNA (miRNA). These small, non-coding RNAs bind to target mRNAs to inhibit translations of and/or degrade the target mRNAs, thus acting as negative regulators of gene expressions. Accumulating evidence indicates that non-physiological expressions of miRNAs contribute to both development and progression of cardiovascular diseases. Since even a single miRNA can have multiple targets, dysregulation of miRNAs can lead to catastrophic changes of proteins that may be important for maintaining physiologic conditions of cells, tissues, and organs. Current knowledge on the role of miRNAs in cardiovascular disease is mostly based on the observational data such as microarray of miRNAs in animal disease models, thus relatively lacking insight of how such dysregulation of miRNAs is initiated and regulated. Consequently, future research should aim to elucidate the more comprehensive mechanisms of miRNA dysregulation during pathogenesis of the cardiovascular system so that appropriate counter-measures to prevent/manage cardiovascular disease can be developed.

Keywords: Cardiovascular diseases; MicroRNA; Heart; Endothelial cells; Smooth muscle cells

Core tip: Accumulating evidence indicates that microRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases. To date, observational studies such as miRNA-profiling in diseased animals and/or patients have provided valuable information regarding their roles in cardiovascular diseases. For example, dysregulated miRNAs under pathologic conditions have been identified, and their possible targets, whose down-regulation may have contributed to the development of corresponding disease, have been examined. Nevertheless, future studies should be more focused on identifying key mechanisms of miRNA dysregulation during pathogenesis of the cardiovascular system so that optimized counter-measures to prevent/manage cardiovascular disease can be designed and developed.