The role of circular RNA hsa_circ_0001789 as a diagnostic biomarker in gastric carcinoma

Abstract

Background

Circular RNA (circRNA) is a kind of endogenous non-coding RNAs and has shown diagnostic values in various cancers. This study aimed to explore whether hsa_circ_0001789 could be a novel biomarker for gastric cancer (GC).

Methods

Quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR was used to detect the expression of hsa_circ_0001789 in 108 paired GC and paracancerous tissues as well as in 24 paired plasma specimens. Possible associations between hsa_circ_0001789 expression and clinicopathologic factors of GC patients were examined using one-way ANOVA. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was established to investigate the diagnostic value of hsa_circ_0001789 in GC.

Results

GC tissues and plasma samples showed down-regulated hsa_circ_0001789 levels than their counterparts, which were closely correlated with the malignant characteristics of GC. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of hsa_circ_0001789 in GC tissues was 0.82, while the cut-off value was 9.5, indicating a favorable diagnostic value. Compared with the traditional tumor biomarkers, hsa_circ_0001789 had preferred AUCs that reached 0.786 for predicting the stage of invasion, 0.603 for predicting the stage of lymphatic metastasis, 0.722 for predicting the stage of distant metastasis, and 0.786 for predicting TNM stage.

Conclusions

Hsa_circ_0001789 may be a novel biomarker for the diagnosis of gastric carcinoma.

Keywords:

• Circular RNA
• hsa_circ_0001789
• biomarker
• diagnosis
• gastric cancer

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all volunteers for their participation in our study.

Ethical approval

Ethics approval for the present study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Ningbo First Hospital and written informed consent was obtained from all enrolled patients.

Author contributions

HL drafted the manuscript and performed the experiments. HS contributed to statistical analysis and performed the experiments. XY and ZZ collected the clinical specimens. PL designed the study. All authors contributed to this manuscript and approved the submission.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Medical Health Science and Technology Project of the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission [No. 2018KY681 and 2019KY571] and the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China [No. LQ18H160015 and LY19H030002].