Diagnostic potential of micro RNAs expression profiles in serum and urine of breast and gynecologic cancer patients

Purpose:

MicroRNAs have been identified as crucial regulators of carcinogenic pathways. Currently, the potential of circulating microRNAs as indicators for various diseases is widely investigated. This study focused on the putative biomarker properties of microRNAs in the diagnostics of breast cancer (BC), endometrial cancer (EC) and ovarian cancer (OC) to evaluate their potential as minimally invasive biomarkers.

Material and methods:

MiRNA microarray chip analysis was performed on serum and urine specimen of BC, EC and OC patients prior to treatment. Therefore, both serum and urine samples were applied for each cancer entity. The BC pool was further stratified according to molecular subtype. MiRNA expression was statistically tested against a control group applying Welch's two-tailed t-test.

Results:

Welch's two-tailed t-test identified 39 aberrantly expressed miRNAs in serum and 48 miRNAs in urine of the investigated cancer patients. In specific, 14 miRNAs in serum could distinguish between “cancer” and control, 16 miRNAs could indicate BC, 8 miRNAs EC and OC, 17 miRNAs EC and 8 miRNAs OC. Likewise, 10 miRNAs were detected in urine with indicatory potential for “cancer”, 7 miRNAs for BC, 11 for EC and OC, 24 for EC and 10 for OC.

Conclusion:

Our results underline the great potential of miRNAs as novel tools in the diagnostic of gynecological malignancies. Due to some overlapping of miRNAs in the performed microarray chip analysis, it might be necessary to identify a unique miRNA signature for each tumor entity in order to increase specificity of potential screening tests for each cancer, respectively.