Experimental Validation of a Potential Circulating microRNA Panel for Non-Invasive Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis

Abstract

MicroRNA (miRNA) expression dysregulations in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have been studied widely for their diagnostic and prognostic utility. By the use of Bioinformatics-based methods, in our previous study, we identified some potential miRNA panels for diagnosis of Pancreatic cancer patients from non-cancerous controls (the screening stage). In this report, we used 142 plasma samples from people with and without pancreatic cancer (PC) to conduct RT-qPCR differential expression analysis to assess the strength of the first previously proposed diagnostic panel (consisting of miR-125a-3p, miR-4530 and miR-92a-2-5p). For this aim the research was divided into two phases: testing, and external validation. A total of 92 PC plasma samples and normal controls (NCs) were evaluated in the testing stage to determine the ability of the considered miRNAs to discriminate cancer from non-cancer samples as a panel. Furthermore, in the external validation phase, a group of 25 PC serum samples vs. 25 NCs was employed to validate the diagnostic value of the panel. As the result, we identified significant up-regulation for all the three considered miRNAs in the serum of PC patients. After that, a three-miRNA panel in serum was developed. For the testing, validating and combined stages, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) for the panel were 0.850, 0.910 and 0.86 respectively, indicating that it had a higher diagnostic value than individual miRNAs. Therefore, we detected a promising three-miRNA panel in the plasma for non-invasive PC diagnosis (miR-125a-3p, miR-4530 and miR-92a-2-5p).

MicroRNA-125a-3p, -4530, and -92a as a Potential Circulating MicroRNA Panel for Noninvasive Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis

“…A preprint of this manuscript has previously been published entitled "Experimental Validation of a Potential Circulating MicroRNA Panel for Non-Invasive Pancreatic Cancer Diag-nosis" [51]. The study was supported by the Research Institute for Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.…”