What you should know:
1. Treatment with prostaglandin E2 promotes CRC metastasis through MIR675, a type of microRNA. Researchers tested how PGE2 affected cancer progression in a preclinical model on mice. The mice that received PGE2 had more metastatic lesions in the liver and lung than the untreated mice.
2. Researchers believe that PGE2 decreased the expression of the gene p53, which is a tumor suppressor. PGE2 increased the amount of MIR675-5p expressed, which increased cancer metastasis due to the microRNA's ability to suppress p53. By stopping this expression, researchers believe they'll lower cancer progression.
3. The researchers will now test samples from patients with different stages of CRC to see how PGE2 and MIR675-5p correlate with a prognosis or response to therapy.
Read the whole study here.