Identification and functional analysis of microRNA deregulated in colorectal cancer
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common types of cancers in the Czech Republic and it is the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western countries. The main reasons of high mortality are diagnosis at the stage of advanced disease, insufficient clinical classification and low level of therapy individualization associated with unsatisfactory therapy responses. That is the reason why several efforts have been made to find new biomarkers in CRC enabling early diagnosis of asymptomatic disease, accurate differentiation between particular clinical stages and individualization of the therapy. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding, single-stranded RNAs, 18 25 nucleotides in length, that are endogenously expressed and post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression. There is an increasing evidence that miRNAs can function as both tumor suppressors and as oncogenes and therefore play an important role in regulation of many biological processes such as cell cycle, proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis or invasiveness. The aim of our study was to determine the expression profiles of 667 miRNAs in CRC tissues and paired non-tumoral tissues and identify miRNAs with deregulated expression in CRC. Selected miRNAs were further validated and their role in regulation of cell cycle, apoptosis, cell viability and metastasing was analyzed in vitro using transient transfection and stable cell lines derived from colorectal cancer. We suppose that miRNAs or proteins that are under their control could serve as potential diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers, which can be identified not only in tumor tissues, but also in serum of CRC patients. The results of our research will be presented. |
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