Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access originally published online on June 9, 2009
JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2009 101(12):840-841; doi:10.1093/jnci/djp172
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© Oxford University Press 2009.
NEWS |
Small RNAs Are Raising Big Expectations
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Five years ago there were little more than 200 known microRNAs (miRNAs)—small regulatory nucleic acids that bind to complementary sites on mRNAs and prevent their translation into protein. Today, that number has swelled to more than 700 and counting. The explosion in knowledge about these small, noncoding RNAs, which appear to be evolutionarily ancient but were discovered less than two decades ago, has already led to the marketing of new cancer diagnostic tools and, researchers say, may eventually lead to treatments.
Take the case of "cancers of unknown primary" (CUPs)—cancers that clearly originated in another, unknown site. CUPs account for about 3% of diagnoses according to Robert Hromas, M.D., chief of oncology services at the University of New Mexico Cancer Research and Treatment Center in Albuquerque.
Using a new miRNA-based test, physicians can now identify the site that the CUP tumor came from, Hromas said, allowing them to choose an
Prognostic Potential
Mining the "miRNAome"
From Diagnosis to Therapy