Role of miRNAs in urological cancers
Shifali Gupta, Suresh Kumar Goyal, Malika Arora, Deepak Gupta
Abstract
The robustly unfavorable prognostic effect of miR-21 has been highlighted across three urologic cancers in the primary analysis. However, the effect of miR-21 in BCa fluctuated in the further confirmation demonstrating single miRNA still lacks the stability. miRNA panel contribute to a better risk stratification and prognostic prediction which could compensate for the unreliability of individual miRNAs in estimating prognosis. However, larger studies with a standardized methodology that assess both single and multiple miRNAs will offer better insight into the prognostic value of miRNAs in urologic cancer. miRNAs’ main function is to inhibit protein synthesis of protein coding genes, either by inhibition of translation or mRNA degradation. However, the relative contribution of each mechanism to repression was unknown until recently. Besides mRNAs repression, miRNAs have been also reported to activate translation of targeted mRNAs. With the advances in molecular biology, efforts are being made to identify sensitive and specific miRNAs for early diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of various urological malignancies. This research can pave the way for improved lifespan and Quality of life of the patients with cancer.