microRNAs as markers of survival and chemoresistance in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Evaluation of: Preis M, Gardner TB, Gordon SR et al. microRNA-10b expression correlates with response to neoadjuvant therapy and survival in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Clin. Cancer Res. 17(17), 5812–5821 (2011).

microRNAs (miRs) are a recently recognized class of noncoding short RNAs, 17–25 nucleotides in length, that play a role in post-transcriptional gene regulation by translational repression and/or mRNA degradation. Various miRs have been highlighted in pancreatic cancer development and metastasis, and as potential clinical diagnostic/prognostic biomarkers. Recently, studies have indicated that miRs are responsible for resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. The miR-10b has been identified as a ‘metastamiR’ in various tumor types, notably breast cancer, but data surrounding its relevance in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma has been sparse. The evaluated article presents data indicating that miR-10b is upregulated in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and can be used as a diagnostic marker in endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration biopsies of suspicious pancreatic lesions. In addition, miR-10b may be able to guide neoadjuvant gemcitabine-based chemoradiotherapy and predict metastatic-free survival and overall survival.

Keywords::

• biomarker
• chemoresistance
• EUS-FNA
• in situ hybridization
• metastamiR
• metastasis
• miR-10b
• miR-21
• pancreatic cancer
• survival

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no 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. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

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