Urinary microRNA Biomarkers for Detecting the Presence of Esophageal Cancer

Abstract

Background: Esophageal cancer (EC) including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and adenocarcinoma (EAC) generally exhibits poor prognosis; hence, a noninvasive biomarker enabling early detection is necessary. Thus, this study aimed to establish novel urinary miRNA biomarkers for diagnosing EC.Methods: Out of 343 patients (299 healthy controls [HCs] and 44 ESCCs), 150 HCs and 43 patients with ESCC, which were both age- and sex-matched, were analyzed and randomly divided into two groups: 9 patients (6 HCs and 3 ESCCs) in the discovery cohort for microarray analysis and 184 patients (144 HCs and 40 ESCCs) in the training/test cohort with cross-validation for qRT-PCR analysis. Using 152 urine samples (144 HCs and 8 EACs), we validated the urinary miRNA biomarkers for EAC diagnosis.Results: Eight miRNAs were selected as biomarker candidates in the discovery cohort. In the training/test cohort, five of the eight miRNAs (miR-1273f, miR-619-5p, miR-150-3p, miR-4327, and miR-3135b) in the ESCC group had significantly higher urinary levels than those in the HC group. Consistently, these five urinary miRNAs were significantly different between HC and ESCC in both training and test sets. Especially, urinary miR-1273f and miR-619-5p showed excellent values of area under the curve (AUC) ≥ 0.80 for diagnosing stage I ESCC. Consistent with the ESCC group, the EAC group had significantly higher urinary levels of these five miRNAs than the HC group, and it also exhibited AUC values of approximately 0.80.Conclusion: The present study established novel urinary miRNA biomarkers that can early detect ESCC and EAC.