Smolarz Mateusz, Widlak Piotr
Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Gliwice Branch, 44-101 Gliwice, Poland.
Cancers (Basel). 2021 Mar 18;13(6):1373. doi: 10.3390/cancers13061373.
Early detection of lung cancer in screening programs is a rational way to reduce mortality associated with this malignancy. Low-dose computed tomography, a diagnostic tool used in lung cancer screening, generates a relatively large number of false-positive results, and its complementation with molecular biomarkers would greatly improve the effectiveness of such programs. Several biomarkers of lung cancer based on different components of blood, including miRNA signatures, were proposed. However, only a few of them have been positively validated in the context of early cancer detection yet, which imposes a constant need for new biomarker candidates. An emerging source of cancer biomarkers are exosomes and other types of extracellular vesicles circulating in body fluids. Hence, different molecular components of serum/plasma-derived exosomes were tested and showed different levels in lung cancer patients and healthy individuals. Several studies focused on the miRNA component of these vesicles. Proposed signatures of exosome miRNA had promising diagnostic value, though none of them have yet been clinically validated. These signatures involved a few dozen miRNA species overall, including a few species that recurred in different signatures. It is worth noting that all these miRNA species have cancer-related functions and have been associated with lung cancer progression. Moreover, a few of them, including known oncomirs miR-17, miR-19, miR-21, and miR-221, appeared in multiple miRNA signatures of lung cancer based on both the whole serum/plasma and serum/plasma-derived exosomes.
在筛查项目中早期发现肺癌是降低这种恶性肿瘤相关死亡率的合理方法。低剂量计算机断层扫描是肺癌筛查中使用的一种诊断工具，会产生相对大量的假阳性结果，而将其与分子生物标志物相结合将大大提高此类项目的有效性。基于血液不同成分提出了几种肺癌生物标志物，包括miRNA特征。然而，其中只有少数在早期癌症检测背景下得到了肯定的验证，这使得一直需要新的生物标志物候选物。癌症生物标志物的一个新兴来源是体液中循环的外泌体和其他类型的细胞外囊泡。因此，对血清/血浆来源外泌体的不同分子成分进行了检测，结果显示肺癌患者和健康个体中的水平不同。几项研究聚焦于这些囊泡的miRNA成分。外泌体miRNA的特征具有有前景的诊断价值，尽管它们都尚未经过临床验证。这些特征总共涉及几十种miRNA，包括在不同特征中重复出现的几种。值得注意的是，所有这些miRNA都具有与癌症相关的功能，并与肺癌进展相关。此外，其中一些，包括已知的致癌miR-17、miR-19、miR-21和miR-221，出现在基于全血清/血浆和血清/血浆来源外泌体的多种肺癌miRNA特征中。
