Background
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) accounts for most of the lung cancer cases and the prognosis of this disease remains poor despite decades of intensive investigation. Thus new insights into underlying mechanisms by which NSCLC develops are avidly needed as the basis for development of new lines of therapeutic strategies. The past decade has witnessed a growing interest on the regulatory roles of micro RNAs on various categories of malignancies. Related data has been well documented in carcinogenesis and pathophysiology of a variety of malignancies. Even so, there is a relative lack of data on roles of mir-144 in tumor biology and there has been no report showing the involvement of mir-144 in NSCLC development.
Conclusions
Our results for the first time showed mir-144-ZFX pathway is involved in the development of NSCLC, which sheds a light for further investigations on underlying mechanisms toward better understanding and management of NSCLC.