High Diagnostic and Prognostic Value of miRNAs Compared with the Carcinoembryonic Antigen As A Traditional Tumor Marker

Abstract: Early diagnosis and accurate prognosis are significant important challenges against effective treatment of cancer and improving patient’s condition. Hitherto, many research works have tended to focus on the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) to detect cancers and estimate the survival rates of patients with multiple cancer types, including colorectal, breast, non-small cell lung, and pancreas cancer. Limited sensitivity and specificity of this traditional tumor marker make it an inappropriate biomarker to diagnose cancer, especially in the early stages while several lines of research have introduced miRNAs as reliable indicators of tumor initiation, development, and therapy response. Indeed, miRNAs have unique properties that provide considerable benefits, such as discriminating benign diseases from malignancies, predicting cancer development and progression, checking sensitivity to treatment, and initial detecting of tumors. This review summarizes the relationships between miRNAs and CEA, the diagnostic significance of CEA in combination with miRNAs, and the distinct advantages of miRNAs over CEA as tumor biomarkers. Advancement in our current understanding of miRNAs is very essential to discover new and effective biomarkers for diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic goals of cancer patients.