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Could MicroRNAs be Useful Tools to Improve the Diagnosis and Treatment of Rare Gynecological Cancers? A Brief Overview
Gynecological cancers pose an important public health issue, with a high incidence among
women of all ages. Gynecological cancers such as malignant germ-cell tumors, sex-cord-stromal
tumors, uterine sarcomas and carcinosarcomas, gestational trophoblastic neoplasia, vulvar carcinoma
and melanoma of the female genital tract, are defined as rare with an annual incidence of
<6 per 100,000 women. Rare gynecological cancers (RGCs) are associated with poor prognosis, and
given the low incidence of each entity, there is the risk of delayed diagnosis due to clinical inexperience
and limited therapeutic options. There has been a growing interest in the field of microRNAs
(miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs of 22 nucleotides in length, because of their potential
to regulate diverse biological processes. miRNAs usually induce mRNA degradation and translational
repression by interacting with the 30 untranslated region (30-UTR) of target mRNAs, as well as
other regions and gene promoters, as well as activating translation or regulating transcription under
certain conditions. Recent research has revealed the enormous promise of miRNAs for improving the
diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of all major gynecological cancers. However, to date, only a few
studies have been performed on RGCs. In this review, we summarize the data currently available
regarding RGCs.peer-reviewe