A scientific journey in circulatory miRNAs; Promising diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in pancreatic cancer

Introduction: Most Pancreatic cancer (PC) patients are asymptomatic before progressive stages. Globally, the incidence of pancreatic cancer is 5.5 per 100,000 for men and 4.0 per 100,000 for women. Despite modern therapeutic advances, PC is one of the most lethal of malignancies and correlated with a poor prognosis. Early diagnosis can significantly improve the prognosis. miRNAs contribute to important biological functions, such as cell cycle progression, cell differentiation, and apoptosis and when dysregulated can promote cells to tumor formation and metastasis. Also, there is strong support that circulating miRNAs can be used to identify efficient biomarkers for early detection of PCDescription: CEA, CA-50 and CA19-9 as common biomarkers have limited specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis and prognosis. Nowadays, circulating miRNAs have been reported to be a novel biomarker in human cancers. Attempts to assess the efficiency of circulating miRNAs solely or in compound with CA19-9 have yielded different results. In this paper, we overview many circulating miRNAs which reported as a potential biomarker for early diagnosis and prognosis in pancreatic cancer. For example, miRNA panel including miRNA-20a, miRNA-21, miRNA-24, miRNA-25, miRNA- 99a, miRNA-185, and miRNA-191 had the overall accuracy 86.8% compared with 76% for CA19-9. Among them, miR-21 was the most frequently identified dysregulated miRNA. Therefore, this review is aimed to provide an overview of previously published studies on circulating miRNAs on the association between blood miRNAs and the PC risk. Discussion and Conclusion: When multiple miRNAs were used together, higher sensitivities and specificity can be obtained. Developing a combination of miRNA markers may be a promising approach for early detection of pancreatic cancer.

کلیدواژه ها:

Pancreatic Cancer ، miRNAs ، Diagnosis ، Prognosis ، Biomarker