MicroRNAs in body fluids—the mix of hormones and biomarkers

By M. Cortez, C. Bueso-Ramos, J. Ferdin, Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, Anil Sood, George A. Calin. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, 2011

1,453 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Since the discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs), the study of these small noncoding RNAs has steadily increased and more than 10,000 papers have already been published. The great interest in miRNAs reflects their central role in gene-expression regulation and the implication of miRNA-specific aberrant expression in the pathogenesis of cancer, cardiac, immune-related and other diseases. Another avenue of current research is the study of circulating miRNAs in serum, plasma, and other body fluids—miRNAs may act not only within cells, but also at other sites within the body. The presence of miRNAs in body fluids may represent a gold mine of noninvasive biomarkers in cancer. Since deregulated miRNA expression is an early event in tumorigenesis, measuring circulating miRNA levels may also be useful for early cancer detection, which can contribute greatly to the success of treatment. In this Review, we discuss the role of fluid-expressed miRNAs as reliable cancer biomarkers and treatment-response predictors as well as potential new patient selection criteria for clinical trials. In addition, we explore the concept that miRNAs could function as hormones.

Subfields: Cancer Research, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/60c1da5c39eb879890c55d740be8284168c3ecba

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Citations in the corpus

Assessing sample and miRNA profile quality in serum and plasma or other biofluids. (2013, neutral): “A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2012.09.015 Abbreviations: LNA, (Locked Nucleic Acid); qPCR, RT, (reverse transcription); QC, (quality control); miR tification cycle).”
Exosomes in Cancer Development, Metastasis and Drug Resistance: A Comprehensive Review (2013, positive): “The circulatory miRNAs are being intensively investigated as biomarkers in different cancers [106].”
microRNAs in cancer (2013, background): “A new, intriguing aspect of miRNA biology is the presence of miRNAs in numerous body fluids, including serum, plasma, saliva, urine, and amniotic fluid (56).”
MicroRNAs in stress signaling and human disease (2012, background): “…poorly understood, aspect of the biology of miRNAs is their presence in numerous body fluids, including serum, plasma, saliva, and amniotic fluid (Cortez et al., 2011). miRNAs in serum correlate with the presence of hematologic malignancies and solid tumors and have been reported to be of value…”
miRNAs as Biomarkers in Disease: Latest Findings Regarding Their Role in Diagnosis and Prognosis (2020, background): “Previous studies have shown that about 10% of the circulating miRNAs are secreted in exosomes, while the other 90% form complexes with proteins like argonaute 2 (Ago2), nucleophosmin 1 (NPM 1) and high density lipoprotein (HDL) [36,39,40].”
microRNA as Biomarkers and Diagnostics (2016, background): “Multivesicular bodies can release exosomes into body fluids (Thery et al., 2002; Cortez et al., 2011).”