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MicroRNAs in Cancer

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RNA and Cancer

Part of the book series: Cancer Treatment and Research ((CTAR,volume 158))

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a group of endogenous, small noncoding RNAs of approximately 22 nucleotides in lengths. As a new class of signaling modulators, miRNAs have attracted great attention for their unique features, including multitarget regulation, tissue specificity, and evolutionary conservation. These small endogenous RNAs are able to interact with many important genes and play critical roles in a wide range of biological processes, including cell proliferation and differentiation. Strikingly, miRNAs are frequently dysregulated in human cancers. A number of studies have shown that miRNAs are involved in cancer pathogenesis by regulating oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. Here, we review recent studies of miRNAs in cancer development and discuss their potential applications in cancer therapeutics.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Yang Hao, Junyu Yang, Ming Ma, Mingjun Jiang, Hanshuo Zhang, and Yanzhen Ye for their collecting literature and manuscription preparation. I also thank Dr. Jane Wu for manuscrition editing and discussion. This work was supported by projects of NSFC (Grant No. 81030040), MOST (Grant No. 2008ZX09401—002, 2011CB809106), NSFC (20733001, 30600142), and Coulter Foundation Seed Grant.

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  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Jianzhong Jeff Xi

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  1. Dept. of Neurology, Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center Center for Genetic Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Jane Y. Wu

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Xi, J.J. (2013). MicroRNAs in Cancer. In: Wu, J. (eds) RNA and Cancer. Cancer Treatment and Research, vol 158. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31659-3_5

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