The potential of miRNAs for diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of breast cancer

Abstract

Dysregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) has a fundamental role in the initiation, development and progression of several human cancers, including breast cancer (BC), since strong evidence has shown that miRNAs can regulate the expression of oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. A possible role of miRNAs in the diagnosis in BC has been demonstrated. As miRNAs has been found stable in biofluids, extracellular multiple miRNA profiles have been proposed as diagnostic tools, showing better diagnostic performance than individual miRNAs in BC. In this paper, based on the current literature, we present the role of microRNAs in the diagnosis and therapy monitoring of BC. Furthermore, we report new miRNA-based drugs that could be turned into promising therapy for BC, alone or in combination with conventional therapy. We also discuss how extracellular miRNAs could become new, easily accessible, affordable, non-invasive tools for BC patients.

Keywords:

• Biomarkers
• breast cancer
• microRNA/miRNAs

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Funding

This work was supported by INTEROMICS flagship project (url: http://www.interomics.eu/it/home), National Research Council CUP Grant B91J12000190001, and by the Project Grant SysBioNet, Italian Roadmap Research Infrastructures.