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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2007;297:937.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Investigators at Ohio State University, in Columbus, and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, in Oklahoma City, have found an association between pancreatic cancer—which carries the worst prognosis of all cancer types—and the expression of certain small regulatory molecules called microRNAs. The findings may offer clues to pancreatic tumorigenesis and provide new diagnostic markers (Lee EJ et al. Int J Cancer. 2007;120:1046-1054).

LARGE EFFECTS OF SMALL RNA

Revelations that microRNAs influence both normal development and disease progression have put them in the spotlight of late. The importance of microRNAs, short segments of RNAs that selectively silence gene expression, was driven home last year when the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to 2 scientists—Andrew Fire, PhD, and Craig Mello, PhD—whose studies laid much of the groundwork for microRNA and other RNA interference research (Kuehn BM. JAMA. 2006;296:2189-2190). Normal functions for RNA interference include protecting cells against viruses . . . [Full Text of this Article]