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

Abstract

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.

Potential plasma biomarkers: miRNA-29c, miRNA-21, and miRNA-155 in clinical progression of Hepatocellular Carcinoma patients

“…Nagi et al, 2018 reported that five miRNAs from 173 (miRNA 584, miRNA 31, miRNA 146b-3p, miRNA 105, and miRNA 29c) showed the best performing related to prognosis value based on multivariate survival analysis [ 48 ]. The median overall survival (OS) HCC subject of the study was 54 days (range: 2–851, days) was lower than the recent study by Ali et al, 2018 (median 10.7 months; range: 9.5–12.9 months) and research by Loosen et al, 2021 (high expression was 83.24 months and 48.99 months low expression) [ 49 , 50 ].…”

Is liquid biopsy the future commutator of decision-making in liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma?

“…Despite its attractive characteristics, circulating miRNAs was rarely investigated in LT, with a total of four studies: two focusing on LT ( 36 , 37 ) ( Table 2 ) and two studies also including other treatments ( 42 , 43 ).…”

AFP-L3 for the diagnosis of early hepatocellular carcinoma

“…[ 34 , 35 ] Serum chromogranin A and microRNA-107 expression levels could be potential diagnostic markers in early stage HCC. [ 36 , 37 ] Deng et al [ 38 ] found that serum pentraxin 3 was an independent risk factor of HCC and could identify hepatitis B virus-associated HCC with an AUC of 0.920 for early-stage HCC. However, further studies are needed to confirm these potential biomarkers.…”