miRNAs as prognostic and therapeutic tools in epithelial ovarian cancer

Abstract

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gynecologic malignancy and is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in women. Developing adjuvant therapy to circumvent drug resistance represents an important aspect of current initiatives to improve survival in women with advanced EOC. A regulatory molecule that can act on multiple genes associated with a chemoresistant phenotype will be the ideal target for the development of therapeutics to overcome resistance and miRNAs constitute promising tools in this regard. In this review, we discuss the emerging role of miRNAs in regulating EOC phenotype with a focus on prognostic and therapeutic importance of miRNAs and the possibility of miRNA modulation as a tool to improve efficacy of chemotherapy in EOC.