PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) as potential biomarkers in bladder cancer

Bladder cancer is the most common type of malignancy of the urinary tract and one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide. This disease can present as non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) or as a metastatic form, each having multiple and different molecular drivers. This type of cancer is a heterogeneous disease with significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. The heterogeneity of this disease, and the fact that the current gold standard for bladder cancer screening is invasive with undesired complications and elevated costs for the patients, demands for substantial research with more in-depth molecular characterization, with the hope of identifying newer non-invasive and highly sensitive diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers for this type of disease. In recent years, non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), specially, microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNA (lncRNAs) have been found to be associated with many types of cancer occurrence, development and resistance to treatment, including bladder. PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), first discovered in germ cells, are a type of small noncoding RNAs (sncRNAs) ۲۴–۳۵ nucleotides long that interact with Piwi proteins and have been linked to transposon silencing, and epigenetic, transcriptional, and translational regulation. New and growing evidence demonstrate that dysregulation and abnormal expression of piRNAs participate in the development of many types of diseases, including cancers, through different mechanisms, such as transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation. The latest studies suggested the use of piRNAs as potential biomarkers for many types of cancers including pancreatic, colorectal, breast and liver. The present review covers the latest findings in the implications of piRNAs in the development and progression of bladder cancer with the main emphasis on new insights regarding their potential as molecular diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers in this type of cancer. This may provide a basis for developing highly specific and sensitive diagnostic tools and more effective therapeutic strategies in the future.

کلیدواژه ها:

Bladder cancer ، piRNA ، Biomarker