Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) researchers have identified a specific microRNA (miRNAs) called ‘miR-155’ that is over-expressed in tongue cancer.
This finding is important in that molecular strategies can potentially be devised to manipulate miR-155 expression to develop therapeutics for tongue cancer, a release from IIT-M said.
miRNAs affect cancer growth through inhibiting or enhancing the functions of certain proteins. ‘For example, it has been shown that a type of protein called ‘programmed cell death 4’ helps in stopping cancer cells from growing and spreading. Inhibition of this protein has been known to cause spread of oral, lung, breast, liver, brain and colon cancers’, it said.
A team of researchers led by Prof Devarajan Karunagaran, Head, Department of Biotechnology, IIT-M, and his research scholar Shabir Zargar collaborated with researchers from Cancer Institute and Sree Balaji Dental College and Hospital in Chennai and Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru.
Their recent paper in this area has been published in the reputed peer reviewed journal Molecular and Cellular biology. It has been co-authored by Shabir Zargar, Vivek Tomar, Vidyarani Shyamsundar, Ramshankar Vijayalakshmi, Kumaravel Somasundaram and Prof Karunagaran.
Karunagaran said, “MicroRNAs (miRNAs) were short non‐coding RNAs containing 20–24 nucleotides that participate in virtually all biological pathways in animals.”
They have been found to play important roles in many cancers, in carcinogenesis (start of cancer), malignant transformation and metastasis – the development of secondary cancer. The miRNAs associated with cancer are called ‘Oncomirs’.
“Many of the oncomirs affect cancer by suppressing the performance of tumour suppressing agents that can prevent growth and spread of cancer cells, although some oncomirs are also involved in preventing tumour growth itself. It is therefore important to identify the types of miRNAs that are associated with both suppression and proliferation of cancer cells”, he said.