Personalized and Precision Medicine Journal

Abstract Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and distant site metastasis is the main cause of death in breast cancer patients. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is defined by the loss of epithelial characteristics and the acquisition of a mesenchymal phenotype. EMT is a vital process for large-scale cell movement during morphogenesis at the time of embryonic development. Tumor cells usurp this developmental program to execute the multi-step process of tumorigenesis and metastasis. Understanding the biological intricacies of the EMT may provide important insights that lead to the development of therapeutic targets in pre-invasive and invasive breast cancer, and could be used as biomarkers for identifying tumor subsets with greater chances of recurrence, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance leading to death. The purpose of this article is to investigate the association between EMT and breast cancer.

Abstract Lung cancer is still the most common cancer worldwide in terms of the number of newly diagnosed cases and mortality rate. The expression of miR-146a was reduced in mesenchymal-like lung cancer cell lines. The overexpression of miR-146a induced a marked reduction of the mesenchymal marker and increase in the epithelial marker in lung cancer cell lines. The current study investigated the association of miR-146a genotypes and lung susceptibility in a Tehran population to determine the visibility of using RFLP-PCR genotype. The results revealed a significantly higher frequency of miR-146a CG and CC genotypes (p =0.01 and p=0.008, respectively) in patients compared with the control group. Those with the miR-146a GC and CC genotypes had an increased risk for developing lung cancer (OR=1.9; 95% CI: 1.1-3.3 and OR=4.1; 95% CI: 1.5-12.3, respectively). Moreover, the frequency rates of miR-146a CC genotype and C allele were significantly higher in patients than in the controls (p =0.006 and p=0.000, respectively).