The role of cancer-derived microRNAs in cancer immune escape

Abstract

During malignant transformation, accumulated somatic mutations endow cancer cells with increased invasiveness and immunogenicity. Under selective pressure, these highly immunogenic cancer cells develop multiple strategies to evade immune attack. It has been well established that cancer cells could downregulate the expression of major histocompatibility complex, acquire alterations in interferon pathway, and upregulate the activities of immune checkpoint pathways. Besides, cancer cells secret numerous cytokines, exosomes, and microvesicles to regulate the functions and abundances of components in the tumor microenvironment including immune effector cells and professional antigen presentation cells. As the vital determinant of post-transcriptional regulation, microRNAs (miRNAs) not only participate in cancer initiation and progression but also regulate anti-cancer immune response. For instance, some miRNAs affect cancer immune surveillance and immune escape by interfering the expression of immune attack-associated molecules. A growing body of evidence indicated that cancer-derived immune modulatory miRNAs might be promising targets to counteract cancer immune escape. In this review, we summarized the role of some miRNAs in cancer immune escape and discussed their potential clinical application as treatment targets.

Recent progress of prognostic biomarkers and risk scoring systems in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

“…MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a group of small non-coding RNAs and play a crucial role in the regulation of gene expression. Human cancer is associated with miRNA expression, including CLL [ 81 – 83 ]. MiR-15a and miR-16-1, located on 13q14, were the earliest miRNAs used in the prognosis of CLL.…”

Impact of Bone Marrow miR-21 Expression on Acute Myeloid Leukemia T Lymphocyte Fragility and Dysfunction

“…In fact, miR-21 is overexpressed in AML blasts, and its inhibition in vitro induces the death of malignant myeloid cells [ 47 ]. In addition, in other cancers, including oral squamous cell carcinoma, exosomal miR-21 derived from tumor cells activates the downstream pathway PTEN-PD-L1 in myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), which further improves immune tolerance in the TME [ 11 ]. We showed that circulating miRNA-21 is highly expressed in the BM aspirates of AML patients compared to those of HDs.…”

“…Within the past few years, numerous studies have demonstrated that the communication between various types of tumor microenvironment (TME) cells and cancer cells is regulated by a unique category of short transcripts that do not encode proteins but do regulate protein expression [ 10 , 11 ]. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small endogenous noncoding RNA molecules consisting of 21–25 nucleotides and are known to play a crucial role in cancer and immunity [ 12 , 13 ].…”

Secondary Resistant Mutations to Small Molecule Inhibitors in Cancer Cells

“…Immunotherapy (briefly mentioned in this review) and modulation of the function of various non-coding RNAs are other forms of cancer therapies that we did not have time to address here [609][610][611][612][613][614].…”