4.6 Article

Serum levels of circulating microRNA-107 are elevated in patients with early-stage HCC

Journal

PLOS ONE
Volume 16, Issue 3, Pages -

Publisher

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247917

Keywords

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Funding

  1. European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program through the ERC Consolidator Grant PhaseControl [771083]
  2. German Cancer Aid (Deutsche Krebshilfe) [110043]
  3. German Cancer Aid (Mildred-Scheel-Professorship)
  4. GermanResearch-Foundation [SFB-TRR57/P06, LU 1360/3-1]
  5. Ernst-Jung-Foundation Hamburg
  6. IZKF (interdisciplinary centre of clinical research) Aachen
  7. medical faculty of the RWTH Aachen
  8. GermanResearch-Foundation grant (DFG) [CA830-1/3]

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miR-107 expression levels in early stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have a potential prognostic value and may serve as a diagnostic biomarker, while circulating miR-107 levels in HCC patients are independent of disease etiology, tumor stage, or tumor grading.
Background Early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common primary liver malignancy, is crucial to offer patients a potentially curative treatment strategy such as surgical resection or liver transplantation (LT). However, easily accessible biomarkers facilitating an early diagnosis of HCC as well as a reliable risk prediction are currently missing. The microRNA(miR)-107 has recently been described as a driver of HCC in both murine and human HCC but data on circulating miR-107 in HCC patients are scarce. In the present study, we evaluated a potential diagnostic and/or prognostic role of circulating miR-107 in patients undergoing tumor resection or LT for early-stage HCC. Methods The Kmplot bioinformatic tool was used to query publicly available databases (including TCGA, GEO and EGA) in order to analyse the prognostic value of tumoral miR-107 expression in HCC patients (n = 372). Serum levels of miR-107 were measured by qPCR in n = 45 HCC patients undergoing surgical tumor resection (n = 37) or LT (n = 8) as well as n = 18 healthy control samples. Results were correlated with clinical data. Results A high tumoral expression of miR-107 was associated with a significantly better overall survival compared to patients with low miR-107 expression levels (HR 0.69, 95% CI 0.48-0.99, p = 0.041). In addition, serum levels of miR-107 were significantly higher in HCC patients when compared to healthy controls. However, miR-107 serum levels in HCC patients were independent of different disease etiology, tumor stage or tumor grading. HCC patients with baseline miR-107 expression levels above a calculated ideal prognostic cut-off value (9.82) showed a clear trend towards an impaired overall survival (p = 0.119). Conclusion Tumoral miR-107 expression levels are a potential prognostic marker in early stage HCC. Furthermore, we describe a potential role of circulating miR-107 levels as a diagnostic biomarker in patients with early-stage HCC.

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