Clinical utility of circulating MicroRNA-21 in breast cancer

ABSTRACT

Background: Breast cancer remains the most frequent type of cancer in females worldwide, with nearly 1.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2012. In Egypt, breast cancer is the most common malignancy among females accounting for 18.3% of total cancer cases in Egypt. Unfortunately, the traditional imaging techniques as well as the currently accepted markers such as serum CEA and CA 15.3 cannot adequately identify early stage patients. MiRNAs are a class of endogenous non-coding RNAs tilde 22 nucleotides in length, which regulate gene expression primarily at the post-transcriptional level and thus are involved in many cellular processes, such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. One of which is miRNA-21 and its alterations have been shown to play critical roles in breast cancer