Targeting microRNAs in Pancreatic Cancer: Microplayers in the Big Game

The prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer is extremely poor, and current systemic therapies result in only marginal survival rates for patients. The era of targeted therapies has offered a new avenue to search for more effective therapeutic strategies. Recently, microRNAs (miRNA) that are small noncoding RNAs (18-24 nucleotides) have been associated with a number of diseases, including cancer. Disruption of miRNAs may have important implications in cancer etiology, diagnosis, and treatment. So far, focus has been on the mechanisms that are involved in translational silencing of their targets to fine tune gene expression. This review summarizes the approach for rational validation of selected candidates that might be involved in pancreatic tumorigenesis, cancer progression, and disease management. Herein, we also focus on the major issues hindering the identification of miRNAs, their linked pathways and recent advances in understanding their role as diagnostic/prognostic biomarkers, and therapeutic tools in dealing with this disease. miRNAs are expected to be robust clinical analytes, valuable for clinical research and biomarker discovery. (C) 2013 AACR.