Genome-wide study of salivary microRNAs as potential noninvasive biomarkers for detection of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Abstract

e17535 Background: Since recent studies reported that blood-based microRNAs (miRNAs) could detect cancers and predict prognosis, a new field has been opened for circulating miRNAs as potential biomarkers in cancers. In this pilot study, we evaluated to our knowledge for the first time whether salivary miRNAs might be applicable as innovative biomarkers for Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) detection. Methods: By high throughput label-free microarray contained 2025 human miRNA probes, 12 down-regulated miRNAs from saliva samples from 22 newly diagnosed NPC patients and 25 healthy controls were selected. Then, their target genes enriched by gene ontology and pathway were used to construct a regulatory and interaction networks. The receiver operating characteristic analyses (ROC) and logistic regression were calculated to assess discriminatory accuracy. Results: Advanced bioinformatics analysis was conducted to understand the most significant hub gene is TP53 that probably regulated by the 12 dysregulated miRNAs. The ROC including the 12 miRNAs as well as the 6 significant deregulated miRNAs separated NPC patients from healthy controls with a very high (areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] = 0.999, sensitivity = 100.00%, specificity = 96.00%) and high accuracy (AUC = 0.941, sensitivity = 95.45%, specificity = 80.00%), respectively. Conclusions: Differentially expressed miRNAs might play critical roles in NPC by regulating their target genes, and may have the potential to become diagnostic biomarkers.