title: MicroRNA screening identifies circulating microRNAs as potential biomarkers for osteosarcoma.
abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a family of small non-protein coding RNAs, which regulate the expression of a wide variety of genes at the post-transcriptional level to control numerous biological and pathological processes. Various circulating miRNAs have been identified as potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in multiple types of cancer and disease. The aim of the present study was to identify potential miRNA biomarkers for the early diagnosis and relapse prediction of osteosarcoma (OS). miRNA profiling was performed on serum from patients with osteosarcoma and healthy controls. All putative miRNAs were verified by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis of 20 pre-therapeutic OS patients and 20 healthy individuals. The expression of miR-106a-5p, miR16-5p, miR-20a-5p, miR-425-5p, miR451a, miR-25-3p and miR139-5p was demonstrated to be downregulated in the serum of OS patients when compared with that of the healthy controls. Receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses indicated that these 7 miRNAs may be used as diagnostic biomarkers with the ability to discriminate between the healthy cohort and patients with OS. These results provide novel insights into the use of miRNAs in early blood screening for OS.
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Li-Hong
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Yurong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ouyang
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hong-Bin
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hanchong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bu
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopedics, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410010, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xiao
keywords: biomarkers; circulating microRNAs; osteosarcoma