Key questions about the checkpoint blockade-are microRNAs an answer?

The introduction of immune-checkpoint blockade in the cancer therapy led to a paradigm change of the management of late stage cancers. There are already multiple FDA approved checkpoint inhibitors and many other agents are undergoing phase 2 and early phase 3 clinical trials. The therapeutic indication of immune checkpoint inhibitors expanded in the last years, but still remains unclear who can benefit. Micro RNAs are small RNAs with no coding potential. By complementary pairing to the 3' untranslated region of messenger RNA, microRNAs exert posttranscriptional control of protein expression. A network of microRNAs directly and indirectly controls the expression of checkpoint receptors and several microRNAs can target multiple checkpoint molecules,mimicking the therapeutic effect of a combined immune checkpoint blockade. In this review, we will describe the microRNAs that control the expression of immune checkpoints and we will present four specific issues of the immune checkpoint therapy in cancer:(1) imprecise therapeutic indication,(2) difficult response evaluation,(3) numerous immunologic adverse-events, and(4)the absence of response to immune therapy. Finally, we propose microRNAs as possible solutions for these pitfalls. We consider that in the near future microRNAs could become important therapeutic partners of the immune checkpoint therapy.

Targeting non-coding RNAs to overcome cancer therapy resistance

It is now well known that non-coding RNAs(ncRNAs),rather than protein-coding transcripts,are the preponderant RNA transcripts.NcRNAs,particularly microRNAs(miRNAs),long non-coding RNAs(lncRNAs),and circular RNAs(circRNAs),are widely appreciated as pervasive regulators of multiple cancer hallmarks such as proliferation,apoptosis,invasion,metastasis,and genomic instability.Despite recent discoveries in cancer therapy,resistance to chemotherapy,radiotherapy,targeted therapy.