Silva Garo Kyurkchiyan‡, Todor Miroslavov Popov‡, Felitsiya Shakola‡, Julian Rangachev‡, Vanyo Ivanov Mitev‡, Radka Kaneva‡Corresponding author: Silva Garo Kyurkchiyan ( sggiragosyan@abv.bg ) © Silva Garo Kyurkchiyan, Todor Miroslavov Popov, Felitsiya Shakola, Julian Rangachev, Vanyo Ivanov Mitev, Radka Kaneva. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Kyurkchiyan SG, Popov TM, Shakola F, Rangachev J, Mitev VI, Kaneva R (2021) A pilot study reveals the potential of miR-31-3p and miR-196a-5p as non-invasive biomarkers in advanced laryngeal cancer. Folia Medica 63(3): 355-364. https://doi.org/10.3897/folmed.63.e55346 |  |
Introduction: Recently, miRNAs have become popular molecules used as non-invasive biomarkers in cancer diseases.
Aim: The aim of the study was to explore the expression of four miRNAs isoforms: miR-31-3p, miR-196a-5p, miR-210-3p and miR-424-5p in plasma and tissue samples from patients with advanced laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) and healthy controls.
Materials and methods: Fresh-frozen tumour and normal laryngeal tissue as well as plasma samples were obtained from 22 patients diagnosed with advanced LSCC. The control group included plasma samples from 21 cancer-free volunteers. Total RNA (including miRNAs) extraction, reverse transcription and real time qPCR were the laboratory techniques used in the study. The obtained results were analyzed using SPSS software v. 23.
Results: We found that miR-31-3p, miR-196a-5p, and miR-210-3p levels were significantly elevated in laryngeal tumour tissue, but only the levels of miR-31-3p and miR-196a-5p were significantly upregulated in the plasma LSCC target group. Positive correlation was obtained for miR-31-3p (rs=0.443, p=0.039) and miR-196a-5p (rs=0.548; p=0.008) between plasma and adjacent tumour tissue LSCC samples. ROC analyses were used to evaluate the discriminative power of both miRNAs alone and in combination. The combination of miR-31-3p and miR-196a-5p showed best results with AUC=0.978 (95% CI: 0.945–1.000, p<0.001) with 100% sensitivity and 81% specificity at cut-off: RQ=2.99.
Conclusions: Based on this miR-31-3p and miR-196a-5p are proposed as potential biomarkers for validation in larger LSCC group and could be included in a non-invasive miRNAs set for detection of advanced LSCC.