| Resistance to conventional chemotherapy remains a major cause of cancer relapse
and cancer‐related deaths. Therefore, there is an urgent need to overcome resistance
barriers. To improve cancer treatment approaches, it is critical to elucidate
the basic mechanisms underlying drug resistance. Increasingly, the mechanisms
involving micro‐RNAs (miRNAs) are studied because miRNAs are also considered
practical therapeutic options due to high degrees of specificity, efficacy, and accuracy,
as well as their ability to target multiple genes at the same time. Years of
research have firmly established miR‐34 as a key tumor suppressor miRNA whose
target genes are involved in drug resistance mechanisms. Indeed, numerous articles
show that low levels of circulating miR‐34 or tumor‐specific miR‐34 expression are
associated with poor response to chemotherapy. In addition, elevation of inherently
low miR‐34 levels in resistant cancer cells effectively restores sensitivity to chemotherapeutic
agents. Here, we review this literature, also highlighting some contradictory
observations. In addition, we discuss the potential utility of miR‐34
expression as a predictive biomarker for chemotherapeutic drug response. Although
caution needs to be exercised, miR‐34 is emerging as a biomarker that could
improve cancer precision medicine. |