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amount of diagnostic information and might be
suf
of miRNAs in body
fluids? How are serum
and plasma samples for miRNA biomarker
discovery generated and stored? Which miRNA
isolation method and which miRNA pro
cient to classify many human cancer
diseases. The bead-based miRNA detection
method also indicates that miRNA pro
ling
has the potential to be implemented in a routine
diagnostic setting for biomarker analysis.
ling
technique should be used in order to standardize
results? What are suitable controls for normali-
zation? Only when these and other questions
have been satisfactorily addressed and more
studies with larger cohorts have been performed
might the use of miRNA biomarkers for assess-
ing health and disease become a reality.
Serum miRNAs as Noninvasive
Biomarkers
The gold standard in current diagnostic tech-
niques for cancer remains histological evaluation
of tumor material obtained from tissue biopsies.
Despite its proven value for diagnosis, retrieving
samples is an invasive, unpleasant, and inconve-
nient process. Therefore, it would be highly desir-
able to develop noninvasive tumor markers for
diagnosis and management of cancer. Studies
like the one from Lu and colleagues
53
show the
huge potential value of miRNAs as prognostic
and predictive biomarkers in cancer, but the diffi-
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare no
financial or commer-
cial con
ict of interest.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported, in part, by the Deutsche For-
schungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through research grant FOR832
(JA 968/4) to H.-M. J. and the Interdisciplinary Center for
Clinical Research (IZKF, project D7) at the University
Hospital of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg to H.-M. J.
and J.W.
-
culties in obtaining suitable and enough tissue
material remain. As a consequence, the search for
noninvasive biomarkers in
fluids such as urine,
saliva, plasma, or serumhas intensi
eld
of circulating nucleic acids in the last years.
Many
ed in the
c
genetic and epigenetic cancer characteristics are
mirrored in plasma and serum, thereby re
studies
have
shown
that
speci
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62
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