• Dépistage, diagnostic, pronostic

  • Découverte de technologies et de biomarqueurs

  • Sein

Circulating cell-free miRNAs as biomarker for triple-negative breast cancer

Menée initialement à partir d'échantillons sanguins prélevés sur 5 patientes atteintes d'un cancer du sein triplement négatif, 5 patientes atteintes d'un autre type de cancer du sein et 5 témoins, puis validée sur 252 patientes complémentaires, cette étude suggère que la mesure du niveau plasmatique du micro-ARN mirR-199a-5p pourrait être utile pour diagnostiquer un cancer du sein triplement négatif

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for 15–20% of all breast cancer in women globally. This subtype often has early and high recurrence rates resulting in poor survival, partially due to lack of targeted therapies. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify TNBC-specific biomarkers for early diagnosis and treatment monitoring, and to develop more effective targeted therapy.

Methods: By using miRCURY LNA array platform, we compared the differential miRNA expressions in plasma of patient with TNBC (n=5) and non-TNBC (n=5), as well as healthy controls (n=5). Potential miRNAs were then validated in a large cohort of patients by real-time PCR.

Results: Ten putative miRNAs from the microarray data that differentially expressed between non-TNBC and healthy controls were identified. In the screening phase (n=90), we selected five miRNAs (miR-92a-3p, miR-342-3p, miR-16, miR-21 and miR-199a-5p) that could discriminate TNBC from non-TNBC for further validation. Results showed that miR-16, miR-21 and miR-199a-5p were underexpressed in TNBC when compared with non-TNBC, and were further validated in a large cohort (n=252). In addition, post-operative plasma levels of miR-16, miR-21 and miR-199a-5p were significantly restored when compared with pre-operative plasma of TNBC. Plasma miR-199a-5p expression in TNBC had significant difference when compared with non-TNBC and healthy controls, the receiver-operator characteristics curve analysis revealed the highest area under curve (AUC=0.8838) among all. The expression levels were associated with TNM stage and tumour subtypes.

Conclusions: Our data suggest that miR-199a-5p could be a TNBC-specific marker with diagnostic value and provide insights into targeted therapy in the treatment of TNBC.

British Journal of Cancer , résumé, 2014

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