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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biochim Biophys Acta. 2014 Oct 28;1855(1):24–42. doi: 10.1016/j.bbcan.2014.10.005

Figure 2. Cell-free miRNA involvement in regulating metastasis.

Figure 2

Cell-free miRNA can influence each step of the metastatic cascade by either promoting (onocmirs, red) or inhibiting (tumor suppressive miRNAs, green) metastatic progression. Cancer cells disseminate from the primary sites after acquiring an invasive phenotype, in part through the EMT, and enter the blood and lymphatic systems. Once in circulation, circulating cancer cells extravasate into distant organs such as the lung and the bone, where they actively grow into metastatic tumors or stay dormant before resuming expansion into overt metastasis. While a number of tumor miRNAs which have been identified in circulation of metastasis patients have been implicated in influencing particular metastatic steps, their role as cell-fee miRNAs has not been validated (miRNAs in italics). Nevertheless, the function of several cell-free miRNAs has been studied during metastatic progression (miRNAs in bold).