:
Lung cancer is the first cause of cancer death in the world due to its high
prevalence, aggressiveness, late diagnosis, lack of effective treatment and poor
prognosis. It also shows high rate of recurrence, metastasis and drug resistance. All
these problems highlight the urgent needs for developing new strategies using noninvasive
biomarkers for early detection, metastasis and recurrence of disease.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene
expression post-transcriptionally. These molecules found to be abnormally expressed in
increasing number of human disease conditions including cancer. miRNAs could be
detected in body fluids such as blood, serum, urine and sputum, which leads us towards
the idea of using them as non-invasive biomarker for cancer detection and monitoring
cancer treatment and recurrence. miRNAs are found to be deregulated in lung cancer
initiation and progression and could regulate lung cancer cell proliferation and invasion.
In this review, we summarized recent progress and discoveries in microRNAs regulatory
role in lung cancer initiation and progression. In addition, the role of microRNAs in EGFR
signaling pathway regulation is discussed briefly.
