Diagnostic Utility of miRNAs in Cancer

Cancer is the one of most prevalent and leading causes of death in the world. Current ad­vancements in technology improve the understanding of the pathogenesis and pathology of cancers. But, due to enlarging mortality rates, poor prognosis, and lacunae in clinical early predictive biomarkers provide an important momentum to investigate novel early diagnos­tic/prognostic markers and specific targets for cancers therapeutics sufficiently sensitive to cancers. Recently, the emerging small noncoding microRNAs (miRNAs) are suggested as important and critical regulators in the oncogenesis pathways and serve as precise and useful early clinical biomarkers. This new class of biomarkers is emerging as a novel molecule for cancer diagnosis and prognosis and recent miRNA expression studies in tumors yield prom­ising results. However, establishing miRNA expression in the blood circulation, cell-free as noninvasive marker, has advantages over determination of tumor in primary tissue. A better understanding of the involvement of this class of molecular markers in carcinogenesis could provide new insights into the mechanisms in the development of tumor and could be helpful to identify new specific novel early powerful markers for the early detection of cancer. The current review study aimed at summarizing the recent research studies supporting the utility of miRNAs as novel early diagnostic and prognostic tools, thus potentially illuminating fu­ture treatment strategies for cancers, which indicates the feasibility and clinical applications and the importance of miRNAs in cancer for researchers and clinical diagnostic centers.