LAUSR

OBJECTIVES The objective of the study is to understand the role of experimentally validated miRNA contributing to the acquisition of oncogenic phenotype in oral submucous fibrosis by computation analysis METHODS: A comprehensive review was carried out to corroborate and summarize altered miRNA expression in oral submucous fibrosis by retrieving relevant publications querying MEDLINE, Web of Sciences, Embase, and Scopus. The association between the miRNA-mRNA was performed using miRTarBase 8.0. The visualization of the miRNA-mRNA interaction was plotted using Cytoscape. MIENTURNET was used for the pathway analysis. Enrichment analysis was carried out for elucidating the hierarchical functions of miRNAs related to the acquisition of biological processes involved in the development of cancer. RESULTS Thirteen miRNAs (hsa-miR-499a, hsa-miR-200b, hsa-miR-200c, hsa-miR-1246, hsa-miR-31, hsa-miR-10b, hsa-miR-21, hsa-miR-203, hsa-miR-455, hsa-miR-760, hsa-miR-623, hsa-miR-610, hsa-miR-509-3-5p) were found to be deregulated in OSF. A total of 371 experimentally validated genes were shown to be interacting with the OSF-associated miRNAs. The targets of antifibrotic and profibrotic miRNAs were enriched in the cancer-related pathways. CONCLUSIONS Dysregulated miRNA and its target genes illustrate the physiological role of miRNAs in fibrosis. Understanding the miRNA-mediated fibrotic signaling, and targetting the specific miRNA-target gene interaction might provide relevant cues to ameliorate the fibrotic disease.