MicroRNAs expression profiling in Egyptian colorectal cancer patients

Abstract

Egypt has increased incidence and high rate of early onset colorectal cancer (CRC). This study aimed to profile the expression levels of 84 circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) in Egyptian CRC patients and to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of some selected miRNAs as diagnostic biomarkers for CRC patients. A total of 129 subjects (84 CRC patients and 45 healthy controls) were enrolled in two independent sample sets: the screening set (39 subjects) and the validation set (90 subjects). The expression profiles of 84 miRNAs were studied by miRNA PCR array in the screening set. Then four miRNAs (let‐7c, 21, 26a, 146a) were selected to be studied by quantitative real‐time PCR in the validation set. The PCR array results revealed significant up regulation of 20 miRNAs and downregulation of two miRNAs in CRC patients compared to the healthy subjects. Moreover, the expression levels of the four selected miRNAs were significantly higher in CRC serum samples than controls. The ROC analysis revealed that miRNAs (let‐7c, 21, 26a and 146a) can effectively discriminate between CRC patients and the controls. The combination of the four miRNAs showed AUC of 0.950 (95% CI [0.898–1.002], p = .001). However, the combination of miR‐21 and miR‐26a showed the best diagnostic accuracy with AUC of 0.953 (95% CI [0.908–0.999], p = .001). The current data suggest that miRNAs (let‐7c, 21, 26a, 146a) could play an important role in CRC development and they can be used as diagnostic biomarkers for CRC.

A microRNA panel compared to environmental and polygenic scores for colorectal cancer risk prediction

“…Another literature candidate, miR-21-5p was also observed to have contradictory deregulation in the prospective set compared to previous reports. MiR-21-5p features prominently in existing literature on miRNAs in CRC and has been reported to be over-expressed in plasma/ serum of CRC 22,28,[31][32][33][34]43 , as well as advanced adenoma patients 32 compared to controls. Conversely, results from our prospective set demonstrated downregulation of miR-21-5p in serum from CRC cases compared to controls.…”

Investigating the Role of Circulating miRNAs as Biomarkers in Colorectal Cancer: An Epidemiological Systematic Review

“…Overall, only eight studies reported all the selected outcomes (AUC values, sensitivity, specificity, fold change, and p -value) [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 36 , 42 , 43 , 53 , 56 ].…”

“…Overall, many dysregulated miRNAs were found, but most of them were not consistently analysed in more than one study. MiR-21 was the most-reported microRNA over the included studies, with 16 studies ([ 14 , 17 , 19 , 21 , 29 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 41 , 44 , 45 , 50 , 51 , 55 ], followed by miR-31([ 14 , 31 , 50 ]), miR-15b ([ 14 , 36 , 53 ]), and miR-20a ([ 15 , 39 , 48 ]), which were used in three studies each. However, in these studies, the expression of miR-20a did not have coherent values.…”

“… Forest plot of included studies assessing the sensitivity and specificity of miR-21 in CRC diagnosis (squares show sensitivity and specificity, respectively; red diamonds show pooled effect; error bars represent 95% confidence interval) Bader El Din, 2020 [ 19 ], Sabry, 2018 [ 21 ], Pan, 2017 [ 36 ], Sazanov, 2016 [ 38 ], Bastaminejad, 2017 [ 37 ], Sarlinova, 2016 [ 42 ], Nonaka, 2015 [ 45 ], Basati, 2014 [ 52 ], Wang, 2012 [ 55 ]. …”

Evaluation of microRNA 92a Expression and Its Target Protein Bim in Colorectal Cancer

“…In Egypt, the incidence rate of CRC is 5.1% in men and 4.7% in women. Egypt is having high global incidence of early CRC as 35% of Egyptian CRC patients were below age of 40 (Bader et al, 2020).…”