Channels • 2021 • Volume 6 • Number 1 Page 1 Channels Vol. 6 No. 1 (2021): 1–8 ISSN 2474-2651 © 2021, Hines, Marcum, Strong, Wade, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Differential MicroRNA Expression in Glioblastoma as a Therapeutic Target or Potential Biomarker Drew Hines, Levi Marcum, Aubrey Strong, Ryan Wade Science and Mathematics Introduction Function of miRNA type of short non-coding RNA of about 20–25 nucleotides, microRNA (miRNA), are found in most eukaryotic cells and certain viruses. MiRNA is primarily involved in the posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression, and they mainly operate by inhibiting mRNA translation or cleaving/destabilizing. RNA polymerase II transcribes Pre-miRNA, which is then cleaved in succession by the proteins Drosha and Dicer. Once the miRNA is fully mature, it can do two things. First, it can bind with the RNA-induced silencing complex, which orients the miRNA so it can more easily interact with mRNA. When the complex recognizes a specific sequence of nucleotides on the mRNA, it can either directly or indirectly cleave the strand. Second, the miRNA can negatively regulate mRNA through a negative feedback loop or a sort of feed-forward loop. Due to the abundance of miRNA and the existence of extracellular circulating miRNA—miRNA that is released into body fluids like blood and cerebrospinal fluid—miRNA has the potential to be an effective biomarker for many diseases. Glioblastoma Glioblastoma is one of the most lethal human cancers. With less than 5% of patients surviving past 5 years, glioblastoma ranks as the most common of primary malignant central nervous system tumors. Doctors can currently treat the tumor through gross total surgery resection followed by radiotherapy and temozolomide, and tumor-treating fields is a new method proven to extend survival (Gimple et al., 2019). Poor prognosis is typical for many glioblastoma patients due to the complexity of the tumor. High degrees of intramural cellular heterogeneity, the infiltrative and migratory nature of glioblastoma cells, and a high rate of tumor recurrence all contribute to its poor prognosis. Recurrent tumors also display distinct divergences from the original tumor, which severely inhibits the information obtained from initial biopsies (Gimple et al., 2019). Another contribution to poor prognosis is the presence of differentially expressed microRNAs. Malignancy and stemness-associated miRNAs have been identified in glioblastoma and may regulate genes associated with cancer development and
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