Abstract
BackgroundDespite the declining incidence of gastric cancer, mortality rate remains high due to late presentation. We aimed to evaluate the sensitivity of miRNA as a diagnostic marker for gastric cancer in the circulation.MethodsPlasma samples from 3 independent groups comprise 123 gastric cancer patients and 111 healthy controls for miRNA profiling from microarray screening.ResultsMicroarray data showed that 25 miRNAs were upregulated in gastric cancer patients and 6 highly expressed miRNAs (miR-18a, miR-140-5p, miR-199a-3p, miR-627, miR-629 and miR-652) were selected for validation. In an independent validation set, levels of miR-627, miR-629 and miR-652 were significantly higher in gastric cancer patients than healthy controls (P <0.0001). An algorithm with improved sensitivity and specificity as gastric cancer classifier was adopted and validated in another random set of 15 plasma samples. Results showed that combination of 3 miRNAs obtained the highest area under curve, with a cut-off at 0.373, with a sensitivity of 86.7 % and a specificity of 85.5 %.ConclusionThis study revealed a three-miRNA signature as a promising classifier for gastric cancer, and greatly enhances the feasibility of circulating miRNAs as non-invasive diagnostic marker for this disease.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12943-015-0473-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Despite the declining incidence of gastric cancer, mortality rate remains high due to late presentation
Discovery of miRNA expression profile in the plasma of gastric cancer patients It is speculated that miRNAs originate from gastric tumor will enter into the circulation, and could be potentially used as molecular marker for early detection of gastric cancer
To identify the miRNA expression profiles in gastric cancer, we first compared the miRNA expression in plasma of gastric cancer patients (n = 5) with healthy controls (n = 5) using microarray analysis
Summary
Despite the declining incidence of gastric cancer, mortality rate remains high due to late presentation. We aimed to evaluate the sensitivity of miRNA as a diagnostic marker for gastric cancer in the circulation. Despite the declining incidence of gastric cancer, there are still more than 1 million cases newly diagnosed and 850,000 deaths globally each year [1]. The mortality rate remains high due to late presentation, since early stage of gastric cancer is either asymptomatic or presents with nonspecific symptoms. Endoscopic and pathological examinations are the common techniques for cancer diagnosis. Despite their sensitivity and specificity to visualize and locate the site of malignancy, these approaches are invasive in nature which
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