Circulating microRNA-92a and microRNA-21 as novel minimally invasive biomarkers for primary breast cancer.
OBJECTIVE
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an essential role in breast malignant tumor development and progression. The development of clinically validated biomarkers for primary breast cancer (BC) has remained an insurmountable task despite other advances in the field of cancer molecular biology. The objective of this study is to investigate the differential expression of miRNAs and the potential of circulating microRNAs as novel primary breast cancer biomarkers.


METHODS
Our analyses were performed on 48 tissue and 100 serum samples of patients with primary BC and a set of 20 control samples of healthy women, respectively. The relative expression of ten candidate miRNAs (miR-106b, miR-125b, miR-17, miR-185, miR-21, miR-558, miR-625, miR-665, miR-92a, and miR-93) from the results of four bioinformatics approaches and literature curation was measured by real-time quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR).


RESULTS
The level of miR-92a was significantly lower, while miR-21 was higher, as previous reports, in tissue and serum samples of BC than that of healthy controls (p < 0.001). Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses revealed the significant and independent value (p < 0.001) of the miR-92a and miR-21 expression quantification in serums. Moreover, the comparison with the clinicopathologic data of the BC patients showed that decreased levels of miR-92a and increased levels of miR-21 were associated with tumor size and a positive lymph node status (p < 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that many miRNAs expressions are altered in BC, whose expression profiling may provide a useful clue for the pathophysiological research. Circulating miR-92a has potential use as novel breast cancer biomarker, which is comparable to miR-21.
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Jinan General Hospital of PLA, Jinan 250031, Shandong, People's Republic of China.
Haiyan
H
Si
Xiaoming
X
Sun
Yingjian
Y
Chen
Yuan
Y
Cao
Shimin
S
Chen
Huanchun
H
Wang
Chengjin
C
Hu
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood* / Q000235:genetics; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D015870:Gene Expression; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000097:blood* / Q000235:genetics; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D012372:ROC Curve
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C524940:MIRN21 microRNA, human; C541874:MIRN92 microRNA, human; D035683:MicroRNAs