Osaki M, Takeshita F, Ochiya T
Section for Studies on Metastasis, National Cancer Center Research Institute, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Biomarkers. 2008 Nov;13(7):658-70. doi: 10.1080/13547500802646572.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved, endogenous, noncoding small RNAs that act as post-transcriptional gene regulators. Experimental evidence has shown that miRNAs can play roles as oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, suggesting their contribution to cancer development and progression. Expression profiles of human miRNAs demonstrated that many miRNAs are deregulated in cancers and are differentially expressed in normal tissues and cancers. Therefore, miRNA profiling is used to create signatures for a variety of cancers, indicating that the profile will help further establish molecular diagnosis, prognosis and therapy using miRNAs. This paper introduces the aberrant expression of miRNAs in human cancer, and discusses the potential of these miRNAs as biomarkers and targets/molecules for molecular therapy.
微小RNA（miRNA）是进化上保守的内源性非编码小RNA，作为转录后基因调节因子发挥作用。实验证据表明，miRNA可作为癌基因或肿瘤抑制基因发挥作用，提示它们在癌症发生和发展过程中发挥作用。人类miRNA的表达谱表明，许多miRNA在癌症中表达失调，在正常组织和癌症中差异表达。因此，miRNA谱被用于创建多种癌症的特征，表明该谱将有助于进一步利用miRNA建立分子诊断、预后和治疗方法。本文介绍了miRNA在人类癌症中的异常表达，并讨论了这些miRNA作为生物标志物以及分子治疗靶点/分子的潜力。
