<p>Circulating microRNAs as promising diagnostic biomarkers for pancreatic cancer: a systematic review</p>

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most common forms of malignant tumors and causes of tumor-related death worldwide. The current prognosis of PC still remains poor due to the lack of effective early detection method. Recently, there is strong support that circulating miRNAs can be used as biomarkers for early detection of various cancers, including PC. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of previous published studies on circulating miRNAs in plasma/serum for early detection of PC and summarize their diagnostic value. PubMed, Embase and Web of Science were systematically searched for eligible studies on circulating miRNAs for PC detection. Overall, 29 studies published between 2009 and 2018 evaluating 51 individual miRNAs (no P-value exceeding 0.05) and 13 miRNAs panels were included. Generally, the diagnostic performance of circulating miRNAs for PC detection was strong, with both the sensitivity and specificity of 36% individual miRNAs and 40% miRNAs panels exceeding 80%. Moreover, two promising miRNA panels were discovered and verified externally with all AUC values exceeding 0.95. Therefore, circulating miRNAs may hold potential to be used as noninvasive diagnostic biomarkers for PC, but large-scale studies are still needed to validate the promising miRNAs and optimize the miRNA panels. Since, the tremendous heterogeneity of studies in this field hampers translating miRNA markers into clinical practice, miRNA analytical procedures are also needed to be standardized in the future.

Serum miR-373-3p and miR-194-5p Are Associated with Early Tumor Progression during FOLFIRINOX Treatment in Pancreatic Cancer Patients: A Prospective Multicenter Study

“…Studies investigating circulating miRNAs in PDAC patients undergoing chemotherapy are scarce and currently no miRNA biomarker has been validated for clinical use. Several studies have been published on the diagnostic [13][14][15] and prognostic value [15][16][17][18] of circulating miRNAs. The present study is one of the first on circulating miRNAs and their value to predict treatment outcome in patients with PDAC.…”

Higher miR‐543 levels correlate with lower STK31 expression and longer pancreatic cancer survival

“…MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a family of small noncoding RNAs (21–23 nucleotides), which play important roles in regulating gene expression by binding imperfectly to the 3´‐untranslated region of target mRNAs 7,8 . After the first report about the role of miR‐15 and miR‐16 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in 2002, 9 lots of studies have drawn the conclusion that the expression of miRNAs in plasma/serum is associated with many cancers, including PC 9‐12 . Therefore, miRNAs may be potentially stable noninvasive biomarkers in PC.…”

“…7,8 After the first report about the role of miR-15 and miR-16 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in 2002, 9 lots of studies have drawn the conclusion that the expression of miRNAs in plasma/serum is associated with many cancers, including PC. [9][10][11][12] Therefore, miRNAs may be potentially stable noninvasive biomarkers in PC. However, these miRNAs, which could definitely affect some gene expression in tissues, seem more important to the prediction of diagnosis and prognosis in cancers.…”

The Role of Circulating MicroRNAs in Patients with Early-Stage Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

“…From a total of 68 evaluated miRNAs, 51 were analyzed as individual ones. Ten studies reported 13 miRNA panels, each of which contains 2-15 miRNAs [56]. For miRNA detection and quantification, qPCR was performed in all studies.…”

“…The normalization methods for the expression of miRNAs were not the same. However, 11 individual miRNAs (miR-10b-5p, miR-20a-5p, miR-21-5p, miR-22-3p, miR-30c-5p, miR-106b-5p, miR-122-5p, miR-181a-5p, miR-642b-3p, miR-885-5p, and let-7a-5p) and 3 panels (panel A: miR-196a-5p, and miR-196b-5p; panel B: miR-22-3p, miR-642b-3p, and miR-885-5p; panel C: miR-20a-5p, miR-21-5p, miR-24-3p, miR-25-3p, miR-99a-5p, miR-185-5p, and miR-191-5p) showed excellent sensitivity and specificity (both ≥90%) for all stages of [56][57][58][59]. Another panel of seven selected miRNAs (miR-20a-5p, miR-21-5p, miR-24-3p, miR-25-3p, miR-99a-5p, miR-185-5p, and miR-191-5p) from PDAC patients' serum was compared to normal controls.…”