Fig. 1.

The potential clinical applications of circulating miRNAs as tumor biomarkers for NSCLC. Diverse circulating miRNAs functioned at various aspects of clinical screening. In NSCLC patient for example, some differentially expressed miRNAs facilitated cancer diagnosis and prognosis while others contributed to treatment strategy selection by distinguishing tumor subtypes, monitoring tumor progression, or predicting the drug resistance. The expression levels of these cell-free miRNAs could be significantly differentiated at early stage, during the tumor progression, or until the late stage. Red color indicated increased expressed miRNAs in peripheral blood of NSCLC patients, while blue color indicated decreased ones