Expression and significance of miR-338 in hepatocellular carcinoma tissue samples

Abstract

Objective To detect the profile of 114 microRNA (miRNA) expression in hepatocellular carcinoma and investigate the relationship of miR-338 expression with clinicopathological parameters. Methods A bead-based miRNA expression profiling method was performed on 20 pairs of surgically removed HCC and adjacent non-tumorous tissue (NT). Special miR-338 downregulations and miR-338 associated with clinical characteristics was validated in an extended samples set of 36 paired HCC and adjacent non-tumorous liver tissues by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis. Results Among these 114 miRNA, 31 miRNA were differentially expressed between HCC and non-cancerous liver tissues with 12 miRNA upregulated and 19 miRNA downregulated in HCC. The downexpression levels of miR-338 cases were found to be significantly associated with vascular invasion, intrahepatic metastasis, tumor size and tumor grade. However, there was no significant difference between miR-338 expression and other clinicopathological parameters in HCC. miR-338 was chosen for expression analysis by real-time RT-PCR analysis in an additional independent set of 36 pairs of HCC and NT. The results showed that the mRNA expression level of miR-338 in HCC was lower than in NT (P < 0.01), the mRNA expression level of miR-338 in M was lower than in NM (P < 0.01) and decreased miR-338 expression was correlated with increasing stage of HCC (P < 0.01). Conclusion Our study suggests that miR-338 expression could have relevance to the clinical behavior of HCC. Key words: Hepatocellular carcinoma; MicroRNA; miR-338; Metastasis