Serum Exosomal MicroRNA, miR-10b-5p, as a Potential Diagnostic Biomarker for Early-Stage Hepatocellular Carcinoma

• Published in: Journal of clinical medicine Vol. 9; no. 1; p. 281
• Main Authors: Cho, Hyo Jung, Eun, Jung Woo, Baek, Geum Ok, Seo, Chul Won, Ahn, Hye Ri, Kim, Soon Sun, Cho, Sung Won, Cheong, Jae Youn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 20-01-2020; MDPI
• Subjects: Biobanks; Biomarkers; Biopsy; Clinical medicine; Hospitals; Liver cancer; Liver diseases; Medical prognosis; MicroRNAs; Software; Statistical analysis; Surveillance; Ultrasonic imaging; United States > US; South Korea; miR-10b-5p; biomarker; exosome; hepatocellular carcinoma
• ISSN: 2077-0383; 2077-0383
• DOI: 10.3390/jcm9010281

Exosomal microRNAs (exo-miRs) have been promising cancer biomarkers. MiRs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell-derived exosomes (HEX) were analyzed to identify reliable serum biomarkers for HCC. To detect overexpressed miRs in HEX, extracted exosomal small RNAs from human HCC cell lines and normal hepatocytes were sequenced and analyzed. Clinical significance of the overexpressed miRs in HEX was evaluated using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) on serum samples of a validation cohort consisting of 28 healthy individuals, 60 with chronic liver disease, and 90 with HCC. We found 49 significantly overexpressed miRs in HEX compared to a normal hepatocyte. Among them, miR-10b-5p, miR-18a-5p, miR-215-5p, and miR-940 were overexpressed in HCC tissues and also associated with prognosis of HCC in the analysis of a public omics database. qRT-PCR analysis of the four serum exo-miRs in the validation cohort revealed serum exo-miR-10b-5p as a promising biomarker for early-stage HCC with 0.934 area under the curve (AUC) (sensitivity, 90.7%; specificity, 75.0%; cutoff value, 1.8-fold). Overexpression of serum exo-miR-215-5p was found to be significantly associated with poor disease-free survival in patients with HCC. Serum exo-miR-10b-5p is a potential biomarker for early-stage HCC, while serum exo-miR-215-5p can be used as prognostic biomarker for HCC.