Circulating microRNAs and extracellular vesicles as potential cancer biomarkers: a systematic review

Abstract

Circulating non-coding RNAs, including microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs, and the protein components of extracellular vesicles are promising biomarkers for the non-invasive detection of cancer at an early stage. This systematic review discusses the increasing number of well-designed cancer biomarker-related studies that have been published worldwide. In many of these studies, high diagnostic accuracy, which is represented as the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve being >0.8, could be achieved using combinations of circulating microRNAs. In addition, similar diagnostic accuracies were reported using long non-coding RNAs or proteins present in extracellular vesicles, although these evidences were based on a limited number of studies.