A glance at micrornas and their target gene deregulations involved in oral squamous cell carcinoma

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as key players in many biological processes influencing malignant transformation of a normal cell. It has been proposed that an over or under expression of specific miRNAs can be utilized as potential marker for making diagnosis, predicting prognosis and streamlining therapeutic choices in Oral Squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). However, more recently researchers are targeting beyond differential expression and digging into impact of Polymorphisms and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNPs) in microRNA genes and even more interestingly the miRNA target genes. Aim of this review is to firstly summarize the differentially expressed miRNA in Oral cancer diagnosis and prognosis utilizing the information retrieved through article searched from PubMed. Secondly, to review the available data on microRNA gene and microRNA target gene polymorphisms and their impact on Oral Cancer and thirdly to identify any gaps which can be filled by future research. microRNAs have turned out to be promising potential biomarkers in Oral cancer, but larger prospective studies are required to validate particular targets and explore their clinical utility. Research on microRNA gene and microRNA target gene polymorphisms is still in its infancy and exploration of this area is likely to uncover interesting scientific information.
Sources of Data /Study Selection: An extensive literature search was done using PubMed database articles in English between 2004 and 2020. We used following terms for search: Oral cancer, Oral Squamous cell carcinoma, Head and Neck cancer and/or microRNA, miRNA profiling, differential expression, miRNA genes, miRNA Target gene SNPS. We summarized the existing literature by reviewing articles with main objective of finding the impact of differentially expressed miRNAs, miRNA gene polymorphisms and miRNA target gene polymorphisms on diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic implications.After reviewing the abstracts, full texts of selected abstracts were retrieved.