MicroRNAs as New Players for Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Therapeutic Targets in Breast Cancer

MicroRNAs are small nonprotein-coding RNAs that regulate the expressions of a wide variety of genes by sequence-specific base pairing on the 3'UTR of mRNA targets resulting in mRNA degradation or inhibition of translation. Aberrant expressions of miRNAs have been linked to tumor development, metastasis, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy response in human breast cancer. Some miRNAs have been considered to have potential clinical applications as a tool for breast cancer prognosis and therapy. Here we describe and discuss lines of evidence supporting the important relationship between miRNAs and breast cancer, and its therapeutic strategies. Copyright (C) 2009 Enders K. O. Ng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.