MicroRNAs as emerging biomarkers for micrometastasis detection in genitourinary tumors.

52 Background: MicroRNAs regulate numerous aspects of normal and pathological cellular processes, including cancer. Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTC) may provide diagnostic and prognostic information in genitourinary (GU) tumors. miRNAs may also be considered as potential therapeutic targets when overexpression is associated to pathogenic effect. miRNAs may constitute a promising new class of cancer biomarkers for CTC detection. The aim of this work is identify miRNAs potentially useful for CTC detection in blood samples from patients with GU tumors: bladder, prostate and renal tumors. Methods: miRGator, miRBase, smiRNAdb, GeneHUB-GEPIS, microRNA.org and miRNAMap free databases were used in order to identify miRNAs as biomarkers for CTC detection. In silico data were used to identify miRNAs highly expressed in GU tumors, but absent in hematopoietic-derived sources. RNA enriched in miRNAs was isolated from: GU tumors (bladder: HT1376, HT1197; prostate: VCaP, LNCaP and renal: ACHN, A704) and hemato...