miRNA在原发性肝癌中的研究进展

Progression of miRNA in the research of primary liver cancer

原发性肝癌是世界范围内最常见和最具侵袭性的恶性肿瘤之一。miRNA是一系列调控基因转录后表达的非编码小RNA。研究发现,miRNA具有癌基因和抑癌基因的作用,在肿瘤的发生和发展中起着重要的作用。已有证据表明,原发性肝癌中存在一些异常表达的miRNA,它们多靶向于肝癌发生、发展相关的基因和信号通路,从而广泛调节肝癌细胞的增殖、分化、凋亡、侵袭和转移等重要的涉及癌细胞发生演变的病理过程。异常表达的miRNA及其功能靶标的发现不仅丰富了肝癌的发病机制,也为探索新的基因靶向治疗提供了可能;miRNA表达谱还与肝癌病理类型、恶性程度、分期、分级等临床病理过程密切相关,提示miRNA不仅可能用于肝癌诊断及个体化治疗,也可能作为判断预后的工具。本文就肝癌发生、发展、诊断、靶向治疗和预后中发挥重要作用的miRNA及其作用靶点作一综述。

Primary hepatocarcinoma is one of the most common and aggressive human malignant tumors, miRNAs are a series of small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expressions in the post-transcriptional level. Research have found that miRNA acts as cancer gene or tumor-suppressor genes and plays an important role in the origin and development of the tumor. Evidence shows that in the primary hepatocarcinoma, there are some aberrant expression miRNAs which target multiple genes and signaling pathways related to hepatocarcinoma development so as to widely adjust the proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, invasion and metastasis and other im- portant pathological processes of evolution in the tumor cells. The discovery of abnormal expression miRNAs and their functional targets not only enrich the pathogenesis of hepatocarcinoma, but also make the new gene targeting treatment possible, miRNA expression profile still closely related with clininincal pathologic process of liver cancer such as pathological type, degree of malignancy, stages, classification indicating miRNA may be used as either diagnosis and individual therapy or prognosis tools. In this paper we reviewed the latest research about miRNA and their targets which play key roles in hepatocarcinoma development, diagnosis, targeted therapy and prognnsis.