Micro-RNA in Hepatocellular Carcinoma - Related Hepatitis C Virus Patients in Correlation to Disease Progression

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a multistep heterogeneous disease as it is related to the risk factors such as HBV and HCV infections, including uncontrolled hepatocyte proliferation, invasion of the neighboring tissue and metastasize to distant tissues. There are several factors affecting the course of HCC among the patients such as oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Recently, molecular mechanisms have cleared some of the underlying mechanisms of carcinogenesis, especially the microRNAs, the upstream regulators of a large number of critical genes. Mature miRNAs found to be mounted into RISC, which helps in recognizing the complementary binding sites in the 3′ untranslated regions of target genes. That binding causes the degradation of/or inhibition of translation of mRNAs. miRNAs have been reported to be deregulated in human cancers demonstrating their double-edged role as a tumor suppressor and as an oncogene. miRNA deregulation is involved in modulating signal pathways of cellular transformation of a normal cell into a cancer cell. miRNAs have been reported to be associated with the processes of carcinogenesis including inflammation, cell-cycle, differentiation, apoptosis, and metastasis. miRNAs have been considered as potential biomarkers in HCC as their development has been attributed to the deregulation of many genes owing to abnormal expression of miRNAs. Herein, the current chapter will focus on studying the regulation of miRNAs in HCC-related HCV patients