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Gasparello et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:52 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2019.17 Metastasis and Treatment

Review Open Access

Circulating microRNAs and liquid biopsy: murine
xenograft models for technical validation of clinical

protocols

Jessica Gasparello , Matteo Allegretti , Chiara Papi , Elena Giordani , Patrizio Giacomini , Roberto
1
2
1
2
2
Gambari , Alessia Finotti 1
1,3
1 Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Ferrara University, Ferrara 44121, Italy.
2 Oncogenomics and Epigenetics, IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, Rome 00144, Italy.
3 Interuniversity Consortium for Biotechnology (CIB), Trieste 34149, Italy.
Correspondence to: Prof. Roberto Gambari, Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Section, Ferrara University, Via Fossato di Mortara 74, Ferrara 44121, Italy. E-mail: gam@unife.it
How to cite this article: Gasparello J, Allegretti M, Papi C, Giordani E, Giacomini P, Gambari R, Finotti A. Circulating microRNAs
and liquid biopsy: murine xenograft models for technical validation of clinical protocols. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:52.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2019.17

Received: 22 Feb 2019 First Decision: 28 Mar 2019 Revised: 17 Apr 2019 Accepted: 5 May 2019 Published: 26 Jun 2019
Science Editor: Ciro Isidoro Copy Editor: Cai-Hong Wang Production Editor: Jing Yu

Abstract
In oncology, liquid biopsy is applied to detect with high efficiency clinically relevant analytes, such as tumor cells,
cell-free nucleic acids, and exosomes in peripheral blood and other body fluids of cancer patients. Liquid biopsy
is considered one of the most advanced non-invasive diagnostic systems useful, in the next future, for enabling
personalized treatments in precision medicine. Medical actions include, but are not limited to, early diagnosis,
staging, prognosis, anticipation (lead time) and prediction of therapy responses, as well as follow up. Experimental
system for validation of the proposed liquid biopsy approaches is highly needed. In this review article we will
discuss the establishment of xenotransplanted mouse model systems for the validation of liquid biopsy protocols
aimed to identify changes in the miRNA plasma content. Human colon cancer HT-29 and LoVo cells have been
xenotransplanted and miR-221-3p and miR-222-3p have been comparatively analyzed in cultured HT-29 and LoVo
cells, xenotransplants and plasma samples.

Keywords: Liquid biopsy, circulating tumor RNA, microRNA, xenograft

© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.

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