Diagnostic performance of serum exosomal miRNA-720 in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Background/Aim: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with poor prognosis, largely due to late detection. Highly accurate biomarkers are urgently needed to detect early-stage HCC. Our study aims to explore the diagnostic performance of serum exosomal microRNA (miR)-720 in HCC.Methods: Exosomal miRNA was measured via quantitative real-time PCR. A correlation analysis of exosomal miR-720 and tumor or clinico-demographic data of patients with HCC was performed. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to assess the diagnostic capacity of serum exosomal miR-720 for HCC, in comparison with α-fetoprotein (AFP) and prothrombin induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist-II (PIVKA-II).Results: MiR-720 was chosen as a potential HCC marker via miR microarray based on significant differential expression between tumor and non-tumor samples. Serum exosomal miR-720 was significantly upregulated in patients with HCC (n=114) versus other liver diseases (control, n=30), with a higher area under the ROC curve (AUC=0.931) than the other markers. Particularly, serum exosomal miR-720 showed superior performance in diagnosing small HCC (< 5 cm; AUC=0.930) compared with AFP (AUC=0.802) or PIVKA-II (AUC=0.718). Exosomal miR-720 levels showed marginal correlation with tumor size. The proportion of elevated miR-720 also increased with intrahepatic tumor stage progression. Unlike AFP or PIVKA-II showing a significant correlation with aminotransferase levels, the exosomal miR-720 level was not affected by aminotransferase levels.Conclusions: Serum exosomal miR-720 is an excellent biomarker for the diagnosis of HCC, with better performance than AFP or PIVKA-II. Its diagnostic utility is maintained even in small HCC and is unaffected by aminotransferase levels.

Emerging role of exosomal microRNA in liver cancer in the era of precision medicine; potential and challenges

“…The serum exosomal miRNA-720 is identified as an excellent biomarker for the detection of HCC, which gives more accurate results compared to AFP or PIVKA-II (protein induced by vitamin K absence). The exosomal miRNA-720 is not influenced by the aminotransferase levels ( Jang et al, 2022 ). There are several other miRNAs are utilized as potential biomarkers in the clinical application for the diagnosis of HCC.…”

Prospects of liquid biopsy in the prognosis and clinical management of gastrointestinal cancers

“…miR-720 was found to be consistently elevated in HCC patients compared to patients with other liver diseases. Moreover, exo-miRNAs are also closely associated with small HCCs and intrahepatic tumor stage progression ( Jang et al, 2022 ). Tumor-suppressing exo-miR-199a-3p is found to reverse and control resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs like cisplatin when externally administered ( Lou et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ).…”