Serum microRNA signatures for the detection of pancreatobiliary cancer.

Abstract

e15718 Background: The diagnostic value of serum microRNAs (miRNA) in a highly sensitive microarray for pancreatobiliary cancer (PBca) has been demonstrated. This study attempted to build and validate a signature comprised of multiple serum miRNA markers for discriminating PBca from healthy controls. Methods: A multicenter prospective study on the diagnostic performance of serum miRNAs was conducted. The patients (pts) with treatment-naïve PBca and healthy participants aged ≥60 years were enrolled. Clinical data and sera were collected. Target population was randomly divided to training or validation cohort with an allocation ratio of 2:1. Twenty-nine serum miRNA markers on the microarray data were analyzed. Using any combinations of the markers, a Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis was performed, and the resulting sensitivity, specificity and AUC of ROC curve to discriminate PBca from healthy controls were calculated for each combination. Marker combinations with a sensitivity/specificity (SN/SP) of ≥80%/90% and high AUC in comparison with AUC of CA19-9 were defined as the diagnostic miRNA signature, which were selected in the training cohort. Next, the signatures were screened out which showed a good reproducibility in the validation cohort. As an independent external cohort, PBca pts and healthy with pooled frozen sera were enrolled and the identified miRNA signatures were further validated. Results: Total of 546 participants (80 healthy and 223 PBca in training set, 40 healthy and 104 PBca in validation set, 49 healthy and 50 PBca in external validation set) were analyzed in this study. Four serum miRNA combinations were identified as the diagnostic miRNA signature. In the training set, four miRNA signatures, consisted of 10 miRNAs, were developed. For the best-performed miRNA signature, the SN/SP and AUC in the validation and external validation cohorts were 84/90% and 0.95 (CA19-9: 73/95% and 0.88) and 84/90% and 0.93 (CA19-9: 80/94% and 0.87), respectively. Conclusions: The diagnostic serum miRNA signatures for PBca were identified in this study.