Killing two birds with one stone: miR-126 involvement in both cancer and atherosclerosis

Both cancer and atherosclerosis are the main causes of morbidity and mortality in the world, and some patients even suffer from both of them. Several studies have shown an association between the pathogenesis of cancer and atherosclerosis. It has been reported that miR-126 may participate in the pathological process of cancer and atherosclerosis. Therefore, we aimed to summarize the role of miR-126 in cancer and atherosclerosis respectively, as well as a possible association between them.

In this paper, "miR-126" and "microRNA-126" are used as the first group of keywords, "atheromatosis" and "atherosclerosis" are used as the second group of keywords, and "tumor" and "cancer" are used as the third group of keywords. In PubMed, the authors selected one of the first group and the second group of keywords to search the literature related to miR-126 and cancer, and one of the first group and the third group of keywords was selected to search the literature on miR-126 and atherosclerosis. All collected articles are from 2021 and before. Irrelevant, withdrawn and review articles were excluded, and the included literature was mainly in the recent five years.

After collection and summary, miR-126 is found involved in cell apoptosis, proliferation, angiogenesis, inflammation, and other processes in both cancer and atherosclerosis by negatively targeting PI3K, VEGF, VCAM-1, EGFL7, CXCL12-CXCR4 axis, and LRP6. Moreover, we briefly review the prospects of miR-126 as a biomarker for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and atherosclerosis in clinical applications.

It has been demonstrated that miR-126 can influence cancer and atherosclerosis by affecting the same or different target genes. Therefore, it facilitates our understanding of the common prevention and treatment strategies of cancer and atherosclerosis by regulating the miR-126-target genes network.