Department of Medical Oncology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Biomed Res Int. 2018 May 22;2018:6784607. doi: 10.1155/2018/6784607. eCollection 2018.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which accounts for 85-90% of primary liver cancer, is the fifth most common malignant tumor and the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, but the pathological mechanism of HCC is still not fully elucidated. miRNAs are evolutionarily endogenous small noncoding RNAs that negatively regulate gene expression via posttranscriptional inhibition or target mRNA degradation in several diseases, especially human cancer. Therefore, discovering the roles of miRNAs is appealing to scientific researchers. Emerging evidence has shown that the aberrant expressions of numerous miRNAs are involved in many HCC biological processes. In hepatocarcinogenesis, miRNAs with dysregulated expression can exert their function as oncogenes or tumor suppressors depending on their cellular target during the cell cycle, and in tumor development, differentiation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, metastasis, and progression of the tumor microenvironment. In this review, we summarize current findings on miRNAs and assess their functions to explore the molecular mechanisms of tumor progression in HCC.
肝细胞癌（HCC）占原发性肝癌的 85-90%，是全球第五大常见恶性肿瘤和癌症相关死亡的第三大主要原因，但 HCC 的病理机制仍未完全阐明。miRNAs 是进化上内源性的小非编码 RNA，通过在几种疾病中（尤其是人类癌症）的转录后抑制或靶 mRNA 降解来负调控基因表达。因此，发现 miRNAs 的作用引起了科学研究人员的关注。新出现的证据表明，许多 miRNA 的异常表达参与了许多 HCC 生物学过程。在肝癌发生过程中，miRNAs 的表达失调可以根据其在细胞周期中的细胞靶标作为癌基因或肿瘤抑制因子发挥作用，在肿瘤发展、分化、凋亡、血管生成、转移和肿瘤微环境进展中。在这篇综述中，我们总结了 miRNA 的最新发现，并评估了它们的功能，以探讨 HCC 中肿瘤进展的分子机制。
