Screening microRNAs as potential prognostic biomarkers for lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Objective

To screen and identify microRNAs (miRNAs) associated with the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) using clinical samples and construct a prediction model for the prognosis of LUAD.

Methods

160 patient samples were used to screen and identify miRNAs associated with the prognosis of LUAD. Differentially expressed miRNAs were analyzed using gene chip technology. The selected miRNAs were validated using samples from the validation sample group. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to construct the model and Kaplan-Meier was used to plot survival curves. Model power was assessed by testing the prognosis of the constructed model using real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) data.

Results

The data showed that miR-1260b, miR-21-3p and miR-92a-3p were highly expressed in the early recurrence and metastasis group, while miR-2467-3p, miR-4659a-3p, miR-4514, miR-1471 and miR-3621 were lowly expressed. It was further confirmed that miR-21-3p was significantly highly expressed in the early recurrence and metastasis group (p = 0.02). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve results showed cut-off point value of 0.0172, sensitivity of 88.2% and specificity of 100%. The predictive results of the constructed model were in good agreement with the actual prognosis of patients by using the validation sample test (Kappa = 0.426, p < 0.001), with a model sensitivity of 74.4%, a specificity of 68.3%, and an accuracy of 71.3%.

Conclusion

miRNAs associated with the prognosis of patients with stage I LUAD were screened and validated, and a risk model for predicting the prognosis of patients was constructed. This model has good consistency with the actual prognosis of patients.

Keywords:

• Lung adenocarcinoma
• microRNA
• prognostic signature
• predictive model

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the ethics committee of Cancer Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. We obtained signed informed consent from the participants/legal guardians in this study.

Authors’ contributions

DHS and GYN were involved in the conception and design; YYK and CH were involved in the acquisition of patient information and tissue samples. DHS was involved in the analysis and interpretation of the data; DHS, LL, and GYN were involved in the drafting of the paper; DX and MYS were involved in revising it critically for intellectual content. All authors were involved in the final approval of the version to be published and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). All of the authors had no personal, financial, commercial, or academic conflicts of interest separately.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Beijing Hope Marathon Special Fund from Cancer Foundation of China. Project Topic name: MicroRNA and its biomedical significance related to postoperative recurrence and metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma. Project Number: ZZ2017A06.