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Cancer initiation and development engage extremely complicated pathological processes which involve alterations of a large number of cell signaling cascades and functional networks in temporal and spatial orders. During last decades, microR NAs(miR NAs), a class of noncoding RNAs, have emerged as critical players in cancer pathogenesis and progression by modulating many pathological aspects related to tumor development, growth, metastasis, and drug resistance. The major function of miR NAs is to post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression depending on recognition of complementary sequence residing in target mR NAs. Commonly, a particular mi RNA recognition sequence could be found in a number of genes, which allows a single miR-NA to regulate multiple functionally connected genes simultaneously and/or chronologically. Furthermore, a single gene can be targeted and regulated by multiple miR NAs. However, previous studies have demonstrated that mi RNA functions are highly context-dependent,which leads to distinct pathological outcomes in different types of cancer as well as at different stages by alteration of the same miR NA. Here we summarize recent progress in studies on miR NA function in cancer initiation, metastasis and therapeutic response, focusing on breast cancer. The varying functions of mi RNAs and potential application of using miR NAs as biomarkers as well as therapeutic approaches are further discussed in the context of different cancers.
Cancer initiation and development engage extremely complicated pathological processes which involve alterations of a large number of cell signaling cascades and functional networks in temporal and spatial orders. During the last decades, microR NAs (miR NAs), a class of noncoding RNAs, have emergent critical players in cancer pathogenesis and progression by modulating many pathological aspects related to tumor development, growth, metastasis, and drug resistance. The major function of miR NAs is to post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression depending on recognition of complementary sequence residing in target mR NAs. Commonly, a particular mi RNA recognition sequence could be found in a number of genes, which allows a single miR-NA to regulate multiple functionally connected genes simultaneously and / or chronologically. Furthermore, a single gene can be targeted and regulated by multiple miR NAs However, previous studies have demonstrated that mi RNA functions are highly context-depe ndent, which leads to distinct pathological outcomes in different types of cancer as well as at different stages by alteration of the same miR NA. Here we summarize recent progress in studies on miR NA function in cancer initiation, metastasis and therapeutic responses, focusing on breast cancer. The varying functions of mi RNAs and potential application of using miR NAs as biomarkers as well as therapeutic approaches are further discussed in the context of different cancers.