miRNA discovery to therapy: The field is sufficiently mature to assess the value of miRNA-based therapeutics

It was outstanding for the entire field of non-coding RNA research Medicine was awarded for the discovery of microRNA (miRNA).1,2 The contribution of the Nobel laureates' work and that of subsequent researchers in the field in the following 2 decades of research have studied extensively the canonical function of miRNAs as an essential regulation of cell function in both health and disease. In addition to their role in post-transcriptional regulation, miRNAs are relatively low in number (a couple of thousand in humans) and are generally well conserved across species. This contrasts sharply with other RNA classes, including mRNAs, which code for specific proteins, and long non-coding RNAs. In particular, long non-coding RNAs can exert their function at either translational or post-translational levels, are orders of magnitude more diverse than miRNAs, and are significantly less conserved in terms of species conservation.