Functional Role of microRNA-23b-3p in Cancer Biology

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute a class of short non coding RNAs that have crucial biological roles by acting mainly as negative regulators of gene expression. The alteration of miRNAs expression has been frequently demonstrated in cancer. Furthermore, miRNAs expression data clearly revealed their possible use as diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers. In this review, we focus on the biological role of human miR-23b-3p in cancer. Several data demonstrated that miR-23b-3p targeted different genes involved in cancer aggressive properties such as proliferation, migration, invasion, and metastasis. In this context, it is known that miR-23b-3p, as other miRNAs, can target either tumor-suppressor genes or oncogenes in different types of tumors. Therefore, its net biological effect can be tumor-specific, mainly depending on the consequent alterations on the downstream effects of the altered pathways. MiR-23b-3p has been found down-regulated or up-regulated in primary tumors and dysregulated in plasma and serum of cancer patients. Its expression levels correlate with the overall survival, disease-free survival and prognosis in several malignancies, thus assuming a remarkable role as molecular biomarker with clinical relevance. Finally, miR-23b-3p is generally considered a responsive molecular therapeutic target as reported in several in vitro and in vivo studies. This suggests that the ectopic modulation of its expression may potentially be important for translational medicine approaches.