Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 5:11:668464.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.668464. eCollection 2021.

miRNA-Based Therapeutics in Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review

Anna Maria Grimaldi  1 , Marco Salvatore  1 , Mariarosaria Incoronato  1
Affiliations

miRNA-Based Therapeutics in Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review

Anna Maria Grimaldi et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in females and despite advances in treatment, it represents the leading cause of cancer mortality in women worldwide. Conventional therapeutic modalities have significantly improved the management of BC patients, but subtype heterogeneity, drug resistance, and tumor relapse remain the major factors to hamper the effectiveness of therapy for BC. In this scenario, miRNA(miR)-based therapeutics offer a very attractive area of study. However, the use of miR-based therapeutics for BC treatment still represents an underdeveloped topic. Therefore, this systematic review aims at summarizing current knowledge on promising miR-based therapeutics for BC exploring original articles focusing on in vivo experiments.

Methods: The current systematic review was performed according to PRISMA guidelines. PubMed and EMBASE databases were comprehensively explored to perform the article search.

Results: Twenty-one eligible studies were included and analyzed: twelve focused on antitumor miR-based therapeutics and nine on metastatic miR-based therapeutics. We found 18 different miRs tested as potential therapeutic molecules in animal model experiments. About 90% of the selected studies evaluate the efficiency and the safety of miRs as therapeutic agents in triple-negative (TN)-BC mouse models. Among all founded miR-based therapeutics, miR-21 emerged to be the most investigated and proposed as a potential antitumoral molecule for TNBC treatment. Besides, miR-34a and miR-205a appeared to be successful antitumoral and antimetastatic molecules.

Conclusions: Our analysis provides a snapshot of the current scenario regarding the miRs as therapeutic molecules in BC. Nevertheless, despite many efforts, none of the selected studies goes beyond preclinical studies, and their translatability in the clinical practice seems quite premature.

Keywords: animal model; antagomirs; breast cancer; diagnosis; miR-mimics; miRNA target; miRs cancer therapy; microRNA.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart for the strategy searches and selection processes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Sung H, Ferlay J, Siegel RL, Laversanne M, Soerjomataram I, Jemal A, et al. . Global Cancer Statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN Estimates of Incidence and Mortality Worldwide for 36 Cancers in 185 Countries. Ca-a Cancer J Clin (2021) 68:394–424. 10.3322/caac.21660 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Costa B, Amorim I, Gartner F, Vale N. Understanding Breast Cancer: From Conventional Therapies to Repurposed Drugs. Eur J Pharm Sci (2020) 151:105401. 10.1016/j.ejps.2020.105401 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Heiser LM, Sadanandam A, Kuo W-L, Benz SC, Goldstein TC, Ng S, et al. . Subtype and Pathway Specific Responses to Anticancer Compounds in Breast Cancer. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2012) 109:2724–9. 10.1073/pnas.1018854108 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Waks AG, Winer EP. Breast Cancer Treatment a Review. Jama J Am Med Assoc (2019) 321:288–300. 10.1001/jama.2018.19323 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Herranz H, Cohen SM. Micrornas and Gene Regulatory Networks: Managing the Impact of Noise in Biological Systems. Genes Dev (2010) 24:1339–44. 10.1101/gad.1937010 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources