miRNAs: roles and clinical applications in vascular disease

Abstract

miRNAs are small, endogenously expressed noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression, mainly at the post-transcriptional level, via degradation or translational inhibition of their target mRNAs. Functionally, an individual miRNA can regulate the expression of multiple target genes. The study of miRNAs is rapidly growing and recent studies have revealed a significant role of miRNAs in vascular biology and disease. Many miRNAs are highly expressed in the vasculature, and their expression is dysregulated in diseased vessels. Several miRNAs have been found to be critical modulators of vascular pathologies, such as atherosclerosis, lipoprotein metabolism, inflammation, arterial remodeling, angiogenesis, smooth muscle cell regeneration, hypertension, apoptosis, neointimal hyperplasia and signal transduction pathways. Thus, miRNAs may serve as novel biomarkers and/or therapeutic targets for vascular disease. This article summarizes the current studies related to the disease correlations and functional roles of miRNAs in the vascular system and discusses the potential applications of miRNAs in vascular disease.

Keywords::

• atherosclerosis
• biomarker
• lipoprotein metabolism
• miRNA
• therapeutic target
• vascular disease
• vascular smooth muscle cell

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was partially supported by a NIH grant (R01HL083471 to Changyi Chen) and by the Michael E DeBakey Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. Sarah M Weakley and Lidong Zhang were supported by a NIH training grant (T32HL083774). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.