Circulating and Endometrial Tissue microRNA Markers Associated with Endometrial Cancer Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Response to Treatment.

Simple Summary: Endometrial cancer (EC) is one of the most common gynecological malignancies. Therefore, it is of great clinical importance to identify potential candidates for diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in order to identify high-risk patients and obtain a more accurate prognosis in a timely manner. MicroRNAs (miRs) are small single-stranded RNAs that regulate gene expression and play a role in all steps of cancer development. The miRs expressed in endometrial tumor tissue are probably involved in cell proliferation and differentiation, apoptosis, and carcinogenesis. We reviewed the literature to identify potential miRs that may function as diagnostic, prognostic, or response to treatment markers in EC. In developed countries, endometrial cancer (EC) is one of the most common neoplasms of the female reproductive system. MicroRNAs (miRs) are a class of single-stranded noncoding RNA molecules with lengths of 19–25 nucleotides that bind to target messenger RNA (mRNA) to regulate post-transcriptional gene expression. Although there is a large amount of research focused on identifying miRs with a diagnostic, prognostic, or response to treatment capacity in EC, these studies differ in terms of experimental methodology, types of samples used, selection criteria, and results obtained. Hence, there is a large amount of heterogeneous information that makes it difficult to identify potential miR biomarkers. We aimed to summarize the current knowledge on miRs that have been shown to be the most suitable potential markers for EC. We searched PubMed and Google Scholar without date restrictions or filters. We described 138 miRs with potential diagnostic, prognostic, or treatment response potential in EC. Seven diagnostic panels showed higher sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of EC than individual miRs. We further identified miRs up- or downregulated depending on the FIGO stage, precursor lesions, and staging after surgery, which provides insight into which miRs are expressed chronologically depending on the disease stage and/or that are modulated depending on the tumor grade based on histopathological evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]