Title:Functional Role of microRNA-23b-3p in Cancer Biology
Volume: 7
Issue: 3
Author(s): Ilaria Grossi, Alessandro Salvi, Gianluca Baiocchi, Nazario Portolani and Giuseppina De Petro*
Affiliation:
- Department of Molecular and Translational Medicine, Division of Biology and Genetics, University of Brescia, Brescia,Italy
Keywords:
Biomarker, cancer, cell-free miRNA, exosome, microRNA, miR-23b.
Abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute a class of short non coding RNAs that have crucial biological
roles by acting mainly as negative regulators of gene expression. The alteration of miRNAs
expression has been frequently demonstrated in cancer. Furthermore, miRNAs expression data clearly
revealed their possible use as diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers. In this review, we focus
on the biological role of human miR-23b-3p in cancer. Several data demonstrated that miR-23b-3p
targeted different genes involved in cancer aggressive properties such as proliferation, migration, invasion,
and metastasis. In this context, it is known that miR-23b-3p, as other miRNAs, can target either
tumor-suppressor genes or oncogenes in different types of tumors. Therefore, its net biological
effect can be tumor-specific, mainly depending on the consequent alterations on the downstream effects
of the altered pathways. MiR-23b-3p has been found down-regulated or up-regulated in primary
tumors and dysregulated in plasma and serum of cancer patients. Its expression levels correlate with
the overall survival, disease-free survival and prognosis in several malignancies, thus assuming a remarkable
role as molecular biomarker with clinical relevance. Finally, miR-23b-3p is generally considered
a responsive molecular therapeutic target as reported in several in vitro and in vivo studies.
This suggests that the ectopic modulation of its expression may potentially be important for translational
medicine approaches.
