肿瘤干细胞miRNA及miRNA作为肿瘤标志物的研究和临床应用进展

Research and Clinical Application of miRNAs in Cancer Stem Cells and as Tumor Markers

肿瘤干细胞(CSCs)理论为肿瘤的研究开辟了一个新的方向,CSCs学说认为肿瘤细胞具有异质性,肿瘤中存在干细胞样细胞,该群细胞是一种增殖失控、可形成肿瘤的细胞,只占肿瘤细胞很少部分,具有干细胞特性,是形成不同分化程度肿瘤细胞和肿瘤增长、复发及转移的根源。微小RNA(miRNA)是广泛存在的非编码小RNA,调节着人类1/3的基因,越来越多的证据显示miRNA在肿瘤的发生发展中起着重要的作用,作为重要的转录后调控因子,广泛参与肿瘤相关基因调控的生物程序,使不同类型的肿瘤表现出特异的miRNA表达谱。近年来,CSCs的miRNA研究日益成为热点,已经发现多种CSCs中存在特异性表达的miRNA,对CSCs的生物学行为有了更进一步的认识,发现肿瘤患者血浆中表达某些特异的miRNA,这些miRNA可以作为肿瘤的标志物对患者的病情及预后进行预测和判断。本文就近来CSCs中miRNA研究进展及miRNA作为肿瘤标志物研究进展进行综述。

The theory of cancer stem cells （CSCs） provides a new perspective for the study of cancer. CSCs doctrine presumes that tumor cells are heterogeneity, and there are cancer stem-like cells in tumors, whose proliferation is uncontrolled. The cancer stem-like cells could form tumors from only few cells, who only account for a very small part of all the tumor cells. These cells with stem cells characteristics could form different extend of differentiation of tumor cells and work as source of tumor growth, recurrence and metastasis, miRNAs are widely-existed non-coding small RNAs, which regulate 1/3 of all human genes and participate in a series of essential processes of life. More and more evidences indicate that miRNAs contribute significantly to cancer generation and development. They may exhibit oncogenic activity and act as tumor suppressors. As one of the post-transcriptional controlling factors, they regulate biological processes of tumor related genes extensively and specific miRNAs expression profiles were shown in different cancers. The research of miRNA about CSCs has become very hot. Some studies have confirmed that miRNAs play a very important role in a variety of CSCs, which act as a new target for tumor therapy. Researchers have found that some specific miRNAs express in plasma of cancer patients, which can be used as tumor markers to assist diagnosis and prognosis. This review focused on current progress of research in function of miRNAs in CSCs and its role as tumor markers.