Multiple Targeting Routes of MicroRNA-22 Inform Cancer Drug Discovery

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of ~23-nt endogenous noncoding RNA transcripts that mediate the posttranscriptional repression of target protein-coding genes . Although the first evidence for the role of miRNAs in cancer development was presented in 2002 , the clinical trials of miRNA-based cancer drugs is just burgeoning recently ]. Certain miRNA has been shown to be capable of targeting multiple mRNAs and affecting extensive protein output . Particularly, miRNA-22 (miR-22) is one of the most studied multitasking miRNAs in tumor initiation and progression to date and attracts special attention from basic and clinical research scientists.