The expression and clinical significance of miRNA-99a and miRNA-224 in non-small cell lung cancer

Curcumin Regulates Cancer Progression: Focus on ncRNAs and Molecular Signaling Pathways

Curcumin [(1E,6E) ‑1,7‑bis(4‑hydroxy‑3‑methoxyphenyl) hepta‑1,6‑diene‑3,5‑ dione] is a natural polyphenol derived from the rhizome of the turmeric plant Curcuma longa. Accumulated evidences have presented curcumin’s function in terms of anti-inflammatory, antioxidant properties, and especially anti-tumor activities. Studies demonstrated that curcumin could exert anti-tumor activity via multiple biological signaling pathways, such as PI3K/Akt, JAK/STAT, MAPK, Wnt/β-catenin, p53, NF-ĸB and apoptosis related signaling pathways. Moreover, Curcumin can inhibit tumor proliferation, angiogenesis, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), invasion and metastasis by regulating tumor related non-coding RNA (ncRNA) expression. In this review, we summarized the roles of curcumin in regulating signaling pathways and ncRNAs in different kinds of cancers. We also discussed the regulatory effect of curcumin through inhibiting carcinogenic miRNA and up regulating tumor suppressive miRNA. Furthermore, we aim to illustrate the cross regulatory relationship between ncRNA and signaling pathways, further to get a better understanding of the anti-tumor mechanism of curcumin, thus lay a theoretical foundation for the clinical application of curcumin in the future.

MDEHT: a multivariate approach for detecting differential expression of microRNA isoform data in RNA-sequencing studies

Motivation

miRNA isoforms (isomiRs) are produced from the same arm as the archetype miRNA with a few nucleotides different at 5 and/or 3 termini. These well-conserved isomiRs are functionally important and have contributed to the evolution of miRNA genes. Accurate detection of differential expression of miRNAs can bring new insights into the cellular function of miRNA and a further improvement in miRNA-based diagnostic and prognostic applications. However, very few methods take isomiR variations into account in the analysis of miRNA differential expression.

Results

To overcome this challenge, we developed a novel approach to take advantage of the multidimensional structure of isomiR data from the same miRNAs, termed as a multivariate differential expression by Hotelling’s T² test (MDEHT). The utilization of the information hidden in isomiRs enables MDEHT to increase the power of identifying differentially expressed miRNAs that are not marginally detectable in univariate testing methods. We conducted rigorous and unbiased comparisons of MDEHT with seven commonly used tools in simulated and real datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Our comprehensive evaluations demonstrated that the MDEHT method was robust among various datasets and outperformed other commonly used tools in terms of Type I error rate, true positive rate and reproducibility.

Availability and implementation

The source code for identifying and quantifying isomiRs and performing miRNA differential expression analysis is available at https://github.com/amanzju/MDEHT.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Genetic Markers in Lung Cancer Diagnosis: A Review

Lung cancer is the most often diagnosed cancer in the world and the most frequent cause of cancer death. The prognosis for lung cancer is relatively poor and 75% of patients are diagnosed at its advanced stage. The currently used diagnostic tools are not sensitive enough and do not enable diagnosis at the early stage of the disease. Therefore, searching for new methods of early and accurate diagnosis of lung cancer is crucial for its effective treatment. Lung cancer is the result of multistage carcinogenesis with gradually increasing genetic and epigenetic changes. Screening for the characteristic genetic markers could enable the diagnosis of lung cancer at its early stage. The aim of this review was the summarization of both the preclinical and clinical approaches in the genetic diagnostics of lung cancer. The advancement of molecular strategies and analytic platforms makes it possible to analyze the genome changes leading to cancer development-i.e., the potential biomarkers of lung cancer. In the reviewed studies, the diagnostic values of microsatellite changes, DNA hypermethylation, and p53 and KRAS gene mutations, as well as microRNAs expression, have been analyzed as potential genetic markers. It seems that microRNAs and their expression profiles have the greatest diagnostic potential value in lung cancer diagnosis, but their quantification requires standardization.

miR-192-5p suppresses the progression of lung cancer bone metastasis by targeting TRIM44

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with 50–70% of patients suffering from bone metastasis. Accumulating evidence has demonstrated that miRNAs are involved in cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in malignancy, such as lung cancer bone metastasis. In the present study, we demonstrated that reduced miR-192-5p and increased TRIM44 levels were associated with the proliferation, migration and invasion of lung cancer. Furthermore, the potential functions of miR-192-5p were explored in A549 and NCI-H1299 cells. We found that miR-192-5p upregulation suppressed tumour behaviours in lung cancer cells. To further investigate whether miR-192-5p is associated with TRIM44, we used TargetScan software to predict the binding site between miR-192-5p and TRIM44. Luciferase activity assays were performed to verify this prediction. In addition, the significant role of miR-192-5p in negatively regulating TRIM44 expression was manifested by our research group. our results suggest that miR-192-5p inhibited the proliferation, migration and invasion of lung cancer through TRIM44.