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Review
. 2020 Jan 21;21(3):700.
doi: 10.3390/ijms21030700.

Potential Clinical Implications of miR-1 and miR-21 in Heart Disease and Cardioprotection

Branislav Kura  1   2 , Barbora Kalocayova  1 , Yvan Devaux  3 , Monika Bartekova  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Potential Clinical Implications of miR-1 and miR-21 in Heart Disease and Cardioprotection

Branislav Kura et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

The interest in non-coding RNAs, which started more than a decade ago, has still not weakened. A wealth of experimental and clinical studies has suggested the potential of non-coding RNAs, especially the short-sized microRNAs (miRs), to be used as the new generation of therapeutic targets and biomarkers of cardiovascular disease, an ever-growing public health issue in the modern world. Among the hundreds of miRs characterized so far, microRNA-1 (miR-1) and microRNA-21 (miR-21) have received some attention and have been associated with cardiac injury and cardioprotection. In this review article, we summarize the current knowledge of the function of these two miRs in the heart, their association with cardiac injury, and their potential cardioprotective roles and biomarker value. While this field has already been extensively studied, much remains to be done before research findings can be translated into clinical application for patient's benefit.

Keywords: biomarkers; cardioprotection; cardiovascular diseases; microRNA-1 (miR-1); microRNA-21 (miR-21).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Process of microRNAs (miRs) synthesis, processing, and targeted miR–binding. MiR synthesis occurs in the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In the nucleus, the primary miR transcript (pri-miR) is processed to pre-miR. In the cytoplasm, pre-miR is transformed to the mature miR.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Role of microRNA-1 (miR-1) in cardiac ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. MiR-1 seems to play diverse roles in I/R injury. In the heart tissue, miR-1 is down-regulated due to I/R (a) but up-regulated in circulation (b), thus suggesting miR-1 as a potential biomarker of I/R injury. Up-regulation of miR-1 in the heart tissue (e.g., in transgenic animals or older patients) seems to exacerbate I/R injury via promoting oxidative stress and apoptosis (a).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Cell-specific microRNA-21 (miR-21) expression in cardiomyopathies. In fibroblasts (a), miR-21 can promote cardiac fibrosis and cardiac hypertrophy. In cardiomyocytes (b), miR-21 can protect against hypertrophy and apoptosis. In fibroblasts of the pressure-overloaded heart (a), miR-21 is up-regulated, but not in cardiomyocytes (b). MiR-21 is involved in heart remodeling in non-ischemic and diabetic cardiomyopathy by promoting cardiac fibrosis. Figure assembled according to [95,97,100,122].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Role of miR-21 in cardioprotection. Up-regulation of miR-21 due to various interventions (e.g., ischemic conditioning, pharmacological and non-pharmacological, or miR-21 mimics) seems to serve cardioprotection mainly against I/R injury of the heart via inhibition of apoptosis and oxidative stress, and promoting angiogenesis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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