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Review|Volume 11, Issue 21|pp 9932—9946

Emerging roles of piRNAs in cancer: challenges and prospects

Ye Cheng1,2, Qian Wang2, Wei Jiang2, Yonghua Bian1, Yang zhou1, Anxing Gou1, Wenling Zhang3, Kai Fu2, Weihong Shi1
  • 1Jiangsu Research Center for Primary Health Development and General Practice Education, Jiangsu Vocational College of Medicine, Yancheng, China
  • 2Department of General Surgery, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
  • 3Department of Gastroenterology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
* Co-first authors
Received: July 10, 2019Accepted: October 28, 2019Published: November 13, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102417

Copyright © 2019 Cheng et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

PiRNAs are a small class of non-coding small RNAs newly discovered in recent years. Millions of piRNAs have been discovered to date, and more than 20,000 piRNA genes have been found in the human genome. Due to the relatively small number of studies related to piRNA, our understanding of piRNAs is very limited. Currently, the clear biological function of piRNAs is transposon mobilization inhibition by promoting transcript degradation and regulating chromatin formation. In addition, piRNAs can form piRNA-PIWI protein complexes with some members of the PIWI branch of the Argonaute protein. Based on these biological functions, piRNAs and PIWI proteins are important in maintaining the genomic integrity of germline cells. Because of this, the popularity of piRNAs research has been focused on its role in germline cells for a long time after the discovery of piRNAs. As the field of research expands, there is growing evidence that piRNAs and PIWI proteins are abnormally expressed in various types of cancers, which may be potential cancer biomarkers and cancer therapeutic targets. In this review, we will focus on the relationship between piRNAs and PIWI proteins and cancers based on previous research, as well as their significance in cancer detection, grading and treatment.