• Non-coding RNAs: novel biomarkers in pancreatic cancer
  • Setayesh Baradaranbagherian,1,* Zeinab Shirvani Farsani,2
    1. Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shahid Beheshti University G.C., Tehran, IR Iran
    2. Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shahid Beheshti University G.C., Tehran, IR Iran.


  • Introduction: Pancreatic cancer is one of the most common causes of death. Worldwide, pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer deaths. By 2030, pancreatic cancer may surpass breast cancer as the second deadliest tumor in the United States. Pancreatic cancer is hardly discovered until serious clinical symptoms appear, consequently, early diagnosis and detection of pancreatic cancer is a clinical challenge. Furthermore, despite the invasive treatment, the therapeutic efficacy of pancreatic cancer is still far from satisfactory. Although some serum tumor biomarkers have been used for detecting pancreatic cancer, including carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen-19.9 (CA19-9), and carbohydrate antigen 242 (CA242), they have the low sensitivity and specificity in the early stage of cancer.
  • Methods: To improve the rate of early detection and increase the survival time of patients with pancreatic cancer, identifying effective tumor biomarkers to distinguish PC patients from healthy people as well as therapeutic targets for treating cancer. This will not only help physicians choose effective and individualized treatment plans, but will also help future research into the molecular mechanisms of the incidence and progression of pancreatic cancer. Although the underlying mechanism of pancreatic cancer remains unclarified, recent Studies have demonstrated that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have several biological functions in different processes including proliferation, cell growth, and differentiation.
  • Results: There are several classes of ncRNAs. NcRNAs less than 200 nucleotides in length are classified as short mostly microRNAs (miRNAs), whereas transcripts more than 200 nucleotides were defined as long ncRNAs (lncRNAs). Many of ncRNAs are involved in regulation of gene expression. The miRNAs are the best-characterized family of ncRNAs to date, which sequences are 20-23 nucleotides in length. MiRNAs regulate the expression of multiple targets, alter cell fate and play key functions in various pathways. lncRNAs interact with different molecules such as DNA, RNA and protein and regulate chromatin organization, transcription, and post-transcription events. Their misregulation leads to the cancer cell capacities for tumor initiation, growth, and metastasis.
  • Conclusion: Remarkably, ncRNAs expressions change in the initiation and progression of cancers. Moreover, ncRNAs are reported to be implicated in various steps of pancreatic cancer development and have a potential worth in the prognostic prediction, diagnosis, and treatment pancreatic cancer. So far, some key functions of lncRNAs including GAS5, PVT1, HOTAIR, and HOTTIP as well as miRNAs such as miR-196a, miR-221, and miR-615-5p have been clarified in previous investigations, although the roles of ncRNAs in the carcinogenesis of PC is still unknown. Further study should be conducted to identify, characterize and elucidate the significant functions of ncRNAs in the pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer at a molecular level and use them to clinical biomarkers.
  • Keywords: pancreatic cancer, miRNAs, long non coding RNAs, biomarker