Research progress of relevance between miRNAs and hepatocellular carcinoma / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)is one of the most common malignancies worldwide.Due to the difficulty of diagnosis in the early stage of HCC, most HCCs are diagnosed in intermediate-advanced stage.Moreover, the high invasion, metastasis and recurrence rate of HCC result in the high mortality of HCC.MicroRNAs(miRNAs) are a class of highly conserved, endogenous, small, non-coding ,single stranded RNA with the length of 22 nucleotides.There are plentiful of miRNAs in liver.MiRNAs not only can regulate the growth and development of liver, but also are closely related to the formation of HCC.In the process of HCC formation, miRNAs could function as oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes to regulate multiple biological processes related to HCC, including cell differentiation,proliferation,tumorigenesis,angiogenesis,invasion,and metastasis.With the intensive study of molecular mechanisms of miRNAs in the process of HCC formation, increasingly studies have revealed that miRNAs could become sensitive biomarkers and effective therapeutic targets for HCC.