Circulating miR-210 as a Novel Hypoxia Marker in Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract

MicroRNA are small noncoding transcripts involved in many cellular mechanisms, including tumorigenesis. miR-210, in particular, is induced by hypoxia and correlates with adverse outcomes in certain cancers. Because pancreatic adenocarcinomas exhibit extremely hypoxic signatures, we hypothesized that miR-210 may serve as a diagnostic marker for screening or surveillance for pancreatic cancer. Plasma samples were obtained from newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer patients and age-matched noncancer controls. miRNA was extracted directly from plasma and reverse-transcribed to complementary DNA. A known quantity of synthetic Caenorhabditis elegans miR-54 (celmiR-54) was added for normalization. miR-210 and cel-miR-54 were then measured using quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. An initial cohort of 11 pancreatic cancer patients and 14 age-matched controls was used as the test set and a second cohort of 11 pancreatic cancer patients and 11 controls was used as the validating set in this study. miR-210 was reliably detected and quantified, with a statistically significant four-fold increase in expression in pancreatic cancer patients compared with normal controls (P < .00004) in the test set. This difference was confirmed in the validation group (P < .018). In summary, circulating miR-210 levels are elevated in pancreatic cancer patients and may potentially serve as a useful biomarker for pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Circulating microRNAs: New biomarkers in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of cancer (Review)

“…In another study, Chen et al demonstrated that by using serum directly or by extracting RNA from the serum they could identify unique miRNA expression profiles for lung cancer, and colorectal cancer patients compared with healthy subjects (48). Circulating miRNAs have also been postulated as novel biomarkers for ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer (38,52,(105)(106)(107). Although the clinical significance of these findings has not been elucidated in detail, those findings demonstrated that circulating miRNAs could be non-invasive diagnostic or prognostic markers for cancer.…”

miRNA-486 and miRNA-499 in human plasma evaluate the clinical stages of lung cancer and play a role as a tumor suppressor in lung tumorigeneisis not pathogenesis

“…miRNAs are protected from endogenous RNase activity which is in a observably stable state in human plasma (Mitchell et al, 2008;Chen et al, 2008). miRNAs can be preserved stably from plasma in the ultra external environment (strong acids and alkalies, high temperature), that is the essential condition to serve as a useful biomarker for cancer diagnosis (Ho et al, 2010;Taylor and Gercel-Taylor, 2008;Huang et al, 2010). miR-486 is one of the most down-regulated micro RNAs in lung cancer (Wang et al, 2014).…”

Microarray expression profile analysis of long non-coding RNAs in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

“…Enormous efforts have been made to identify the special molecular markers for PDAC, which show vast application prospect as targets for the disease treatment. The research fields of molecular markers for PDAC include proteins, such as K-Ras, p16, and SMAD4 (3)(4)(5); miRNAs, such as miR-210 and miR-221 (6)(7)(8); and the recently research hotspot the lncRNAs.…”