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Eng et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:69 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2019.021 Metastasis and Treatment

Review Open Access

Micromanaging autophagy with microRNAs to drive
cancer metastasis

Gracie Wee Ling Eng , Venetia Jing Tong Kok , Jit Kong Cheong 1,2
1
1,2
1 Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.
2 Medical Sciences Cluster, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597, Singapore.
Correspondence to: Prof. Jit Kong Cheong, Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of
Singapore, Singapore. 8 Medical Drive, MD7 #03-09, Singapore 117597, Singapore. E-mail: bchcjk@nus.edu.sg

How to cite this article: Eng GWL, Kok VJT, Cheong JK. Micromanaging autophagy with microRNAs to drive cancer metastasis.
J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:69. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2019.021

Received: 31 Jul 2019 First Decision: 6 Sep 2019 Revised: 17 Sep 2019 Accepted: 24 Sep 2019 Published: 30 Sep 2019

Science Editor: Chun Hei Antonio Cheung Copy Editor: Jia-Jia Meng Production Editor: Jing Yu

Abstract

While we made great strides in the early detection of a handful of cancers, many other cancers are still detected at
fairly later stages, thus hindering the deployment of effective surgical or therapeutic intervention to change their
dismal clinical outcomes. The arduous journey of cancer cells from the primary tumor to colonize distant secondary
organs or tissues begins with their ability to activate or deactivate various cellular processes at will, including the
autophagy machinery. In this review, we discuss how circulatory cancer cells from primary tumors could selectively
mobilize different subsets of microRNAs (miRNAs) to enable autophagic recycling of nutrients during their search
for secondary sites to colonize and to disable such cell survival programs once they have successfully established at
distant organs or tissues. We also discuss how this new miRNA-autophagy-metastasis axis can be targeted by the
emerging RNA Medicine toolkit.

Keywords: Autophagy, miRNAs, cancer, metastasis

CANCER METASTASIS: KNOWING TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
Metastasis remains one of the key reasons for the poor prognosis of cancer patients. The one-year survival
of patients with stage 1 localized lung cancers is 87.3%, but plummets to merely 18.7% for stage 4 metastatic
[1]
lung cancers . Similar trend is observed for colorectal cancer, where one-year survival is 97.7% if detected
at stage 1 and rapidly decline to 43.9% if detected at stage 4. These depressing statistics underscores our

© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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