Although some studies have shown that increased miR-146a levels are associated with HCC, others have revealed that miR-146a suppresses cancer cell proliferation, invasion and metastasis.
This review goes into an in-depth look at the most recent finding regarding the significance of one particular miRNA, miR-146a-5p, and its involvement in cancer.
In this study, we performed the first meta-analysis of the prognostic value of miR-146a-5p expression in diverse malignancies and explored prospective targets of miR-146a-5p and related signaling pathways.
Of relevance, overexpression of miR-146a in metastatic clones showed reduced in vitro malignancy and abolished the development of primary tumor and liver metastases.
Aberrant expression of miR-146a has been reported to be involved in the progression and metastasis of various types of human cancers; however, its potential role in human neuroblastoma is still poorly understood.
A negative correlation was demonstrated between miR-146a expression in primary tumors and serum levels of cancer antigen 125 (R=-0.37; P=0.03) and Risk of Malignancy Algorithm index (R=-0.79; P=0.0007).
Polymorphisms rs2910164 in miR-146a and rs486907 in the RNASEL gene have both independently been associated with the risk of different cancers, and an interaction between them has been observed in nonmelanoma skin cancer.
In this study, we investigated the effects of OPM2 (a MM cell line) exosomes (OPM2-exo) on regulating the proliferation, cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) transformation, and IL-6 secretion of MSCs and determined the role of miR-21 and miR-146a in these effects.
Certain miRNAs such as miR-146a or miR-155 play an important role in the regulation of post-transplant immunity in mice.While some miRNAs e.g. miR-423 or miR-155 are regulated in plasma or full blood during acute GvHD also in man, the relevance and expression profile of miRNAs in T-cells after allogeneic SCT is unknown. miR-625-3p has recently been described to be overexpressed in colorectal malignancies where it promotes migration, invasion and apoptosis resistance.
We further performed functional studies of three microRNA variants associated with cancer (rs2910164:C > G in MIR146A, rs11614913:C > T in MIR196A2, and rs3746444:A > G in both MIR499A and MIR499B).
miR-146a plays important roles in cancer as it directly targets NUMB, an inhibitor of Notch signaling. miR-146a is reportedly regulated by a G>C polymorphism (SNP; rs2910164).
Our study suggested that urinary miR-146a-5p might be useful as a new noninvasive diagnostic marker, therapeutic target, or anticancer agent for bladder cancer, as well as for increasing our understanding of cancer biology.
The microRNA miR146a has a potential role in the development of breast cancer and the effects of its SNPs require further inquiry to determine the nature of their influence on breast tissue and cancer.
However, the molecular details underlying miR-146a mediated regulation of its target genes and its precise biological function in cancer, especially in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear.
This intriguing hypothesis is supported by several observations: i) in endothelial cells undergoing replicative senescence (HUVECs), a well-established model of cell senescence, miR-146a, miR-34a, and miR-181a are over-expressed whereas their target Bcl-2 is down-regulated; ii) IPA of the miR-146a, miR-34a and miR-181a network shows that they are closely linked to each other, to Bcl-2 and to mitochondria; and iii) miR-146a, miR-34a, and miR-181a are involved in important cell functions (growth, proliferation, death, survival, maintenance) and age-related diseases (cancer, skeletal and muscle disorders, neurological, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases).