Filetti Veronica, Lombardo Claudia, Loreto Carla, Dounias George, Bracci Massimo, Matera Serena, Rapisarda Lucia, Rapisarda Venerando, Ledda Caterina, Vitale Ermanno
Occupational Medicine, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy.
Human Anatomy and Histology, Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, 95123 Catania, Italy.
Biomedicines. 2023 Feb 13;11(2):538. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines11020538.
Environmental exposure to fibers of respirable size has been identified as a risk for public health. Experimental evidence has revealed that a variety of fibers, including fluoro-edenite, can develop chronic respiratory diseases and elicit carcinogenic effects in humans. Fluoro-edenite (FE) is a silicate mineral first found in Biancavilla (Sicily, Italy) in 1997. Environmental exposure to its fibers has been correlated with a cluster of malignant pleural mesotheliomas. This neoplasm represents a public health problem due to its long latency and to its aggression not alerted by specific symptoms. Having several biomarkers providing us with data on the health state of those exposed to FE fibers or allowing an early diagnosis on malignant pleural mesothelioma, still asymptomatic patients, would be a remarkable goal. To these purposes, we reported the miRNA transcriptome in human normal mesothelial cell line (MeT-5A) and in the human malignant mesothelioma cell line (JU77) exposed and not exposed to FE fibers. The results showed a difference in the number of deregulated miRNAs between tumor and nontumor samples both exposed and not exposed to FE fibers. As a matter of fact, the effect of exposure to FE fibers is more evident in the expression of miRNA in the tumor samples than in the nontumor samples. In the present paper, several pathways involved in the pathogenesis of malignant pleural mesothelioma have been analyzed. We especially noticed the involvement of pathways that have important functions in inflammatory processes, angiogenesis, apoptosis, and necrosis. Besides this amount of data, further studies will be designed for the selection of the most significant miRNAs to test and validate their diagnostic potential, alone or in combination with other protein biomarkers, in high-risk individuals' liquid biopsy to have a noninvasive tool of diagnosis for this neoplasm.
环境暴露于可吸入大小的纤维已被确认为对公众健康的一种风险。实验证据表明，包括氟钙闪石在内的多种纤维可引发慢性呼吸道疾病并对人类产生致癌作用。氟钙闪石（FE）是一种硅酸盐矿物，于1997年首次在意大利西西里岛的比安卡维拉被发现。环境暴露于其纤维与一组恶性胸膜间皮瘤有关。由于这种肿瘤潜伏期长且无特定症状预警其侵袭性，它代表了一个公共卫生问题。拥有多种生物标志物，为我们提供有关暴露于FE纤维者的健康状况的数据，或者能够对仍无症状的恶性胸膜间皮瘤患者进行早期诊断，将是一个了不起的目标。为了这些目的，我们报告了在暴露和未暴露于FE纤维的人正常间皮细胞系（MeT - 5A）和人恶性间皮瘤细胞系（JU77）中的miRNA转录组。结果显示，在暴露和未暴露于FE纤维的肿瘤和非肿瘤样本之间，失调的miRNA数量存在差异。事实上，暴露于FE纤维的影响在肿瘤样本中miRNA的表达上比在非肿瘤样本中更明显。在本文中，分析了恶性胸膜间皮瘤发病机制中涉及的几种途径。我们特别注意到在炎症过程、血管生成、细胞凋亡和坏死中具有重要功能的途径的参与。除了这些大量数据外，还将设计进一步的研究，以选择最显著的miRNA进行测试，并验证它们单独或与其他蛋白质生物标志物联合在高危个体液体活检中的诊断潜力，从而获得针对这种肿瘤的非侵入性诊断工具。
