Multifunctional roles of microRNAs in human glioblastoma

Glioma are among the most deadly types of cancer. In spite of the enormous improvements made in neurosurgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy the prognosis of malignant glioma has remained poor over the last decade. Such bad efficacy in the management of glioma is largely attribuitable to resistance to therapeutic drugs and to the highly invasive nature of glioma cells capable of diffusely infiltrating and widely migrating in the surrounding brain tissue, leading to restricted and incomplete surgical resection and, thus, high recurrence rates. MicroRNAs (miRNA) represent a novel class of small RNAs that function as negative regulators of gene expression, deeply involved in the pathogenesis of several types of cancer. Different evidences indicate that miRNAs might play a fundamental role in tumorigenesis, cell proliferation, migration and apoptosis. The objective of this study is the identification and the functional characterization of microRNAs and their targets involved in resistance to therapeutics drugs (TRAIL, temozolomide) and in tumorigenesis of glioma cells.