MicroRNA-21 as a biomarker for ovarian cancer detection

Abstract

Ovarian cancer is a lethal disease. One of the problems faced by patients with ovarian cancer is the lack of symptoms in its early stages, which results in it only being detected when it is at an advanced stage. Therefore, there is an urgent need for biomarkers that can predict ovarian cancer precisely. The purpose of this study was to determine the expression of microRNA-21 as a predictive biomarker candidate in both early- and advanced-stage ovarian cancer. This was a cross-sectional study using the blood plasma of 21 healthy control subjects and 37 blood plasma samples from patients with ovarian cancer. Blood plasmas were collected, from which the RNA was isolated. Based on the RNA, the cDNA was synthesized and run through qPCR, the results of which were analyzed using the Livak method. The results showed an upregulation of microRNA-21 in the advanced stage by 2.14 fold compared with the early stage, and 6.13 fold compared with the healthy controls (p < 0.05). The upregulation of microRNA-21 in early-stage ovarian cancer was 2.86 fold compared with the healthy control subjects (p < 0.05). In addition, there was an increase in the expression of microRNA-21 in ovarian cancer by 4.14 fold compared with the healthy controls (p < 0.05). Based on these results, it can be concluded that the expression of microRNA 21 upregulated with the severity of the disease.

Evaluation of miR-22 and miR-21 as diagnostic biomarkers in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer

“…Involvement of miR-21 was reported in metastases and invasion in breast cancer via decrease in the expression of PTEN (Zhu et al 2008 (Lou et al 2010). A significant correlation of up-regulated miR-21 with FIGO stages was supported by Kartika et al (2018). Meng et al analyzed the expression of seven different microRNAs (miR-7, miR-16, miR-25, miR-93, miR-182, miR-376a and miR-429) with clinicopathological characteristics i.e., grading, lymph node and FIGO stages (Meng et al 2015).…”

“…A number of other studies have highlighted the role of miR-21 in invasion and metastasis by targeting tumor suppressor genes including PTEN, BCL-2, and PDCD4 (Asangani et al 2008;Lou et al 2010;Chan et al 2014). Elevated levels of serum miR-21 in epithelial ovarian cancer patients have been reported (Xu et al 2013;Kartika et al 2018). It has been found that miR-22 regulates the BMP7 and PPAR alpha signaling pathways in human chondrocytes (Ting et al 2010).…”

Expression of Circulating MicroRNA-141 in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

“…Early-diagnosis of EOC is difficult to achieve due to the asymptomatic nature of EOC at the early stage and lack of sensitive screening methods. Albeit, CA-125 is considered as the most promising biomarkers in serum, the sensitivity and specificity are not sufficient to detect cancer at an early stage ( 16 , 26 , 27 , 51 ). Less than half of the total cases of ovarian cancer are diagnosed effectively because of its limited specificity and sensitivity ( 27 ).…”

“…The relative miR-141 expression was calculated using 2 −ΔΔCt ( 49 – 51 ). The differences of copy number of miR-141 between the EOC group and healthy control group was calculated using the formula ΔΔCt miR-141 = (Ct miR-141−Ct miR-16) of EOC group-(Ct miR-141–Ct miR-16) of the healthy control group.…”