Uncovering the regulatory roles of miR-4319 in tumour progression

Abstract

MicroRNA (miRNA) is a small and non-coding RNA that can control the post-transcriptional expressions of many downstream targets. Several in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies have reported the putative tumour-modulatory roles of miR-4319 in multiple human cancers. However, an effective review article that could summarize the findings of the tumour-regulatory functions of miR-4319 in human cancers is scarce. To bridge the gap in the literature, this review aimed to unravel the tumour-regulatory roles of miR-4319 by integrating the findings from various original research articles. Overall, miR-4319 is underexpressed in at least 14 human cancers, suggesting its downregulation is linked to cancer progression. Further analyses of the data from various literatures showed that besides influencing the translational repression of different downstream targets, miR-4319 could also interact with seven types of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) (LINC00667, HOXA-AS3, CPLC, GNAS-AS1, DANCR, PCAT18, and TNK2-AS1) and two types of circular RNA (circRNA) (circATXN7 and circ_0058058). Dysregulation of these interactions can facilitate cancer development. Considering the observations that miR-4319 is downregulated in many cancer types, it has a promising role to be employed as a diagnostic biomarker. Besides, the upregulation of miR-4319 is also associated with good clinical outcomes in colorectal, liver, and prostate cancers, making miR-4319 a potential candidate as a prognostic biomarker. Additionally, overexpressing miR-4319 could potentially help slow cancer progression. Although miR-4319 has the potential to be utilized as a biomarker or therapeutic agent, more future studies, including clinical trials with a scale-able sample size, should be conducted to validate the accuracy, reliability, safety, sensitivity, and specificity of miR-4319 as a biomarker or therapeutic agent.