Cosentino Giulia, Plantamura Ilaria, Tagliabue Elda, Iorio Marilena V, Cataldo Alessandra
Molecular Taregting Unit, Research Department, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy.
Cancers (Basel). 2021 Jul 22;13(15):3691. doi: 10.3390/cancers13153691.
The clinical management of breast cancer reaches new frontiers every day. However, the number of drug resistant cases is still high, and, currently, this constitutes one of the major challenges that cancer research has to face. For instance, 50% of women affected with HER2 positive breast cancer presents or acquires resistance to trastuzumab. Moreover, for patients affected with triple negative breast cancer, standard chemotherapy is still the fist-line therapy, and often patients become resistant to treatments. Tumor microenvironment plays a crucial role in this context. Indeed, cancer-associated stromal cells deliver oncogenic cues to the tumor and vice versa to escape exogenous insults. It is well known that microRNAs are among the molecules exploited in this aberrant crosstalk. Indeed, microRNAs play a crucial function both in the induction of pro-tumoral traits in stromal cells and in the stroma-mediated fueling of tumor aggressiveness. Here, we summarize the most recent literature regarding the involvement of miRNAs in the crosstalk between tumor and stromal cells and their capability to modulate tumor microenvironment characteristics. All up-to-date findings suggest that microRNAs in the TME could serve both to reverse malignant phenotype of stromal cells, modulating response to therapy, and as predictive/prognostic biomarkers.
乳腺癌的临床管理每天都在开拓新领域。然而，耐药病例的数量仍然居高不下，目前，这是癌症研究必须面对的主要挑战之一。例如，50%的HER2阳性乳腺癌女性患者会出现或获得对曲妥珠单抗的耐药性。此外，对于三阴性乳腺癌患者，标准化疗仍然是一线治疗方法，而且患者常常会对治疗产生耐药性。在这种情况下，肿瘤微环境起着至关重要的作用。事实上，癌症相关的基质细胞向肿瘤传递致癌信号，反之亦然，以逃避外源性损伤。众所周知，微小RNA是参与这种异常串扰的分子之一。的确，微小RNA在诱导基质细胞中的促肿瘤特性以及在基质介导的肿瘤侵袭性增强中都发挥着关键作用。在此，我们总结了关于微小RNA参与肿瘤与基质细胞之间串扰及其调节肿瘤微环境特征能力的最新文献。所有最新研究结果表明，肿瘤微环境中的微小RNA既可以逆转基质细胞的恶性表型、调节对治疗的反应，也可以作为预测/预后生物标志物。
