It's a Knockout: Mouse miRNA Pair Provides Cancer Insight

A team at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) has revealed the molecule to cancer development, showing that its absence leads to dysregulation of the cell cycle, albeit with differing cancer-related outcomes. Tokyo, Japan - The abnormal expression of different classes of molecules are known to be linked to various types of cells becoming cancerous. This is also true for the recently discovered group of small, noncoding molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs), although much remains to be discovered in detail about how they can prevent or induce tumors. A new study reported in the journal Blood Advances has extended our knowledge of the link between miRNAs and cancer by showing that the absence of miR-146b, as well as miR-146a, reported previously, in mice led them to develop cancers of the blood such as leukemia and lymphoma. However, the researchers also identified differences in features of the cancer cells themselves depending on which miRNA was absent, along with variation in which type of cancer developed and at what rate.