miRNA biomarker discovery in cardiovascular research

The presentation will cover our work to identify circulating miRNAs as biomarkers associated to cardiotoxicity both in patients and using an animal model of treatment. I'd like to discuss our recently published results about anti-cancer drug cardiotoxicity in patients and some data on animal models. We analysed the expression of circulating miRNAs in plasma of patients suffering from breast Cancer and treated with two anticancer drugs belonging to the anthracycline’s family: Doxorubicin and Epirubicin. After a screening conducted by open array, we confirmed the data using single miRNAs assays and identified a group of miRNAs which seem to be able to predict cardiovascular damage. This we proposed a model of prediction to be validated by future works. Similar work on an animal model of doxorubicin treatment evidenced the potential of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers of anthracyclines-induced cardiac dysfunction.