MicroRNA in the Tumor Stroma: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Implications

In this chapter, the author highlight dysregulated MicroRNAs (miRNA), as potential therapeutic targets in different tumor stromal cells describe their functions in the regulation of the tumor microenvironment. They also discusses the role of tumor-related miRNAs as biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. TAMs show the ability to promote the tumor development and progression by enhancing angiogenesis, immune suppression, tumor cell invasion, and metastatic programming of tumor tissue, and thus reducing patient survival. MiRNAs can also be delivered by inorganic nanoparticle–based vectors, such as gold nanoparticles, iron-nanoparticles and silica-based nanoparticles. Tumor stroma plays an essential role during tumor growth, thus targeting tumor stromal cells provides possibilities to inhibit the promotion activities in tumor progression and metastasis. The authors summarizes various miRNA delivery approaches that have been or can potentially be applied to deliver miRNA as therapeutics into the stromal cells.