MiR-140 in cancer and beyond: a brief update

Abstract

Cancer chemotherapy causes many side-effects, including joint pain. A better understanding of the common biology of cancer and osteoarthritis could help us to find out ways to cure the cancer and to alleviate pain if their shared mechanisms are responsible for joint pain and/or related side-effects. In this mini-review, we focus on the networks of miR-140 that are involved in both cancer and osteoarthritis during development and carcinogenesis. Frontiers including autophagy, potential stem-cell therapy and early nanotechnological diagnosis of those diseases will be briefly discussed.