REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1609646
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring New Anticancer Agents and Mechanisms in Urologic CancersView all articles
MicroRNA-145 in Urologic Tumors: Biological Roles, Regulatory Networks, and Clinical Translation
Provisionally accepted
- Gannan Medical University, Ganzhou, China
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Tumors of the urinary system primarily encompass prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers, which exhibit high morbidity and mortality rates worldwide and pose a particularly significant threat to men's health. Given the associated high morbidity and mortality, early diagnosis and effective treatment are crucial. Consequently, innovative research is urgently needed to enhance the clinical care of patients with urologic cancers. Recent studies have demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs), as key non-coding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression, play a vital regulatory role in malignant tumor development by binding to the mRNA 3'-UTR region. Large-scale genomic analyses (e.g., TCGA Pan-Cancer Atlas) reveal that over 50% of miRNA genes reside in cancerassociated regions, regulating >60% of protein-coding genes. miR-145 exemplifies this paradigm, with its dysregulation causally linked to tumor proliferation, metastasis, and therapy resistance. Among them, miR-145, as a regulatory molecule with significant anticancer properties, presents unique expression characteristics and functional mechanisms in urological tumours. In this review, we summarize the role of miR-145 in specific urological tumors, along with its downstream target molecules and cells, which may enhance our understanding of miR-145 in these cancers. In conclusion, miR-145 is a multifaceted regulator in urological oncology that has strong potential to range from non-invasive biomarker discovery to therapeutic strategies that work synergistically with conventional treatments, ultimately advancing precision medicine in prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers.
Keywords: microRNA -145, Cancer, prostate cancer, Bladder cancer, Kidney cancer, urologic tumors
Received: 10 Apr 2025; Accepted: 25 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gan, Li, 陈, 程, Zhang, Zhong, Lu, Qian and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Biao Qian, Gannan Medical University, Ganzhou, China
Liying Zheng, Gannan Medical University, Ganzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.