Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among women worldwide, and its treatment has made some progress but still faces challenges such as recurrence, metastasis and drug resistance. Breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) play a key role in breast cancer recurrence and metastasis due to their properties such as self-renewal, differentiation potential and drug resistance. They can evade the attack of the immune system. They are resistant to various chemotherapeutic drugs, which makes it challenging to eliminate them by conventional treatment, resulting in poor therapeutic effects. miRNAs, as a class of non-coding RNA molecules, can influence the biological characteristics of BCSCs through fine-regulating gene expression, which can provide a new idea and method for treating breast cancer. In this paper, we investigated the effects of miRNAs on BCSCs through various mechanisms, such as regulating key signalling pathways, influencing the expression of cell surface markers, and inducing apoptosis. We demonstrated that miRNAs can reduce the stemness of BCSCs and increase the therapeutic sensitivity. Meanwhile, this paper also discusses the current challenges of miRNA therapy, such as delivery efficiency, targeting and in vivo stability. By optimising the miRNA delivery system, improving targeting accuracy and exploring combined treatment options, it is expected to overcome the existing limitations, promote the translation of miRNA therapy to clinical applications and provide more effective and personalised therapeutic options for breast cancer patients
Source: Theoretical and Natural Science
Authors: Xi Chen, Xiaoshu Wang
Language: English
Subfield: Cancer Research
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4406188096