Journal
ONCOTARGET
Volume 6, Issue 6, Pages 4537-4550Publisher
IMPACT JOURNALS LLC
DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.3005
Keywords
microRNA; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma; Distant Metastasis; Prognosis
Categories
Funding
- Princess Margaret Cancer Center Head & Neck Translational Program
- Wharton Family
- Joe's Team
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- Dr. Mariano Elia Chair in Head and Neck Cancer Research
- Campbell Family Institute for Cancer Research
- Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship program
- Terry Fox Foundation Strategic Training Initiative for Excellence in Radiation Research of the 21st Century (EIRR21) at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- Peterborough KM Hunter Graduate Studentship
- Gattuso Slaight Personalized Cancer Medicine Fund at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
- Ontario Institute for Cancer Research through Government of Ontario
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Purpose Despite significant improvement in locoregional control in the contemporary era of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) treatment, patients still suffer from a significant risk of distant metastasis (DM). Identifying those patients at risk of DM would aid in personalized treatment in the future. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play many important roles in human cancers; hence, we proceeded to address the primary hypothesis that there is a miRNA expression signature capable of predicting DM for NPC patients. Methods and results The expression of 734 miRNAs was measured in 125 (Training) and 121 (Validation) clinically annotated NPC diagnostic biopsy samples. A 4-miRNA expression signature associated with risk of developing DM was identified by fitting a penalized Cox Proportion Hazard regression model to the Training data set (HR 8.25; p < 0.001), and subsequently validated in an independent Validation set (HR 3.2; p = 0.01). Pathway enrichment analysis indicated that the targets of miRNAs associated with DM appear to be converging on cell-cycle pathways. Conclusions This 4-miRNA signature adds to the prognostic value of the current gold standard of TNM staging. In-depth interrogation of these 4-miRNAs will provide important biological insights that could facilitate the discovery and development of novel molecularly targeted therapies to improve outcome for future NPC patients.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available