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Review
. 2019 Oct 11;8(10):1661.
doi: 10.3390/jcm8101661.

Circulating miRNAs as Diagnostic and Prognostic Biomarkers in Common Solid Tumors: Focus on Lung, Breast, Prostate Cancers, and Osteosarcoma

Michela Bottani  1 , Giuseppe Banfi  2   3 , Giovanni Lombardi  4   5
Affiliations
Review

Circulating miRNAs as Diagnostic and Prognostic Biomarkers in Common Solid Tumors: Focus on Lung, Breast, Prostate Cancers, and Osteosarcoma

Michela Bottani et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

An early cancer diagnosis is essential to treat and manage patients, but it is difficult to achieve this goal due to the still too low specificity and sensitivity of classical methods (imaging, actual biomarkers), together with the high invasiveness of tissue biopsies. The discovery of novel, reliable, and easily collectable cancer markers is a topic of interest, with human biofluids, especially blood, as important sources of minimal invasive biomarkers such as circulating microRNAs (miRNAs), the most promising. MiRNAs are small non-coding RNAs and known epigenetic modulators of gene expression, with specific roles in cancer development/progression, which are next to be implemented in the clinical routine as biomarkers for early diagnosis and the efficient monitoring of tumor progression and treatment response. Unfortunately, several issues regarding their validation process are still to be resolved. In this review, updated findings specifically focused on the clinical relevance of circulating miRNAs as prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers for the most prevalent cancer types (breast, lung, and prostate cancers in adults, and osteosarcoma in children) are described. In addition, deep analysis of pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical issues still affecting the circulation of miRNAs' validation process and routine implementation is included.

Keywords: biomarkers; breast cancer; circulating miRNAs; extraanalytical variability, sensitivity and specificity; lung cancer; miRNA signature; osteosarcoma; prostate cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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