From inflammatory bowel disease to colorectal cancer: what's the role of miRNAs?

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disease with relapse and remission periods. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are two major forms of the disease. IBD imposes a lot of sufferings on the patient and has many consequences; however, the most important is the increased risk of colorectal cancer, especially in patients with Ulcerative colitis.

miRNA-29a reverses P-glycoprotein-mediated drug resistance and inhibits proliferation via up-regulation of PTEN in colon cancer cells.

Colon cancer is a serious malignant type of cancer in the world. Acquisition of multi-drug resistance (MDR) during chemotherapy is still a controversial challenge during cancer treatment. Accordingly, detection of safe and impressive MDR-reversing targets such as microRNAs (miRNAs/miRs) can play critical role in cancer treatment.