MicroRNAs in Diagnosis and Prognosis in Cancer: What Does the Future Hold?

Abstract

Studies have demonstrated that miRNAs may be specific to or enriched for tissue and disease types. For example, miR-122 is liver specific while miR-126 in enriched in the vasculature [5,6]. There are several high-throughput approaches to quantifying miRNAs in tissue samples, but the gold standard is still unclear. Northern blotting was initially one of the primary methods used to detect individual small RNAs. cDNA oligonucleotide arrays have become a standard global-scale technique for miRNA profiling [7]. Real-time PCR has been successfully used for detecting low copy number precursor and mature miRNA with high sensitivity and specificity [8]. Deep sequencing is also being used to identify both miRNAs and other noncoding RNAs [9].