Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Loosen, Sven H
• Castoldi, Mirco
• Jördens, Markus S
• Roy, Sanchary
• Vucur, Mihael
• Kandler, Jennis
• Hammerich, Linda
• Mohr, Raphael
• Tacke, Frank
• Ulmer, Tom F
• Neumann, Ulf P
• Luedde, Tom
• Roderburg, Christoph
• Avila, Matias A.

Titel

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

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2021-03, Vol.16 (3), p.e0247917-e0247917

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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. 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. 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). 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.