Published online Oct 10, 2014. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v5.i4.730
Revised: June 7, 2014
Accepted: June 18, 2014
Published online: October 10, 2014
Processing time: 208 Days and 4.4 Hours
Cancer initiation and development engage extremely complicated pathological processes which involve alterations of a large number of cell signaling cascades and functional networks in temporal and spatial orders. During last decades, microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of non-coding RNAs, have emerged as critical players in cancer pathogenesis and progression by modulating many pathological aspects related to tumor development, growth, metastasis, and drug resistance. The major function of miRNAs is to post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression depending on recognition of complementary sequence residing in target mRNAs. Commonly, a particular miRNA recognition sequence could be found in a number of genes, which allows a single miRNA to regulate multiple functionally connected genes simultaneously and/or chronologically. Furthermore, a single gene can be targeted and regulated by multiple miRNAs. However, previous studies have demonstrated that miRNA functions are highly context-dependent, which leads to distinct pathological outcomes in different types of cancer as well as at different stages by alteration of the same miRNA. Here we summarize recent progress in studies on miRNA function in cancer initiation, metastasis and therapeutic response, focusing on breast cancer. The varying functions of miRNAs and potential application of using miRNAs as biomarkers as well as therapeutic approaches are further discussed in the context of different cancers.
Core tip: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to play critical roles in cancer pathogenesis and progression by modulating tumor initiation, growth, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance. In this review, we discuss the recent progress in understanding miRNA function in cancer development and therapeutic response, especially in breast cancer, as well as the potential application of using miRNA signatures as biomarkers for predicting therapeutic response and for personalizing anti-cancer regimens.