With all the recent ink on EGFR mutations in lung cancer and response to targeted TKIs, I thought that a recent paper by Seike et al (link to abstract, full text requires access) in the July 21, 2009 PNAS was interesting because they examined 28 cases of lung adenocarcinoma in never smokers by microRNA expression profiling and found that changes in previously identified miRNA expression (e.g. upregulated miR-21) were exaggerated in cases with EGFR mutations compared with those without mutations.
In addition, they found a significant correlation between pEGFR and miR-21 expression in lung adenocarcinoma cell lines and suppression of miR-21 by an EGFR-TKI. They also showed induction of apoptosis in both EGFR mutated and wild-type lung adenocarcinoma cell lines with antisense miRNA-21--suggesting that aberrantly expressed may be a therapeutic target that is independent of EGFR mutation status.
The microRNA research is exploding and is hard to keep up with since it seems so far from daily practice--but is something of which we should at least be aware.
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