Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Purpose
Despite significant improvement in locoregional control in the contemporary era of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) treatment, patients still suffer from a significant risk of distant metastasis (DM). Identifying those patients at risk of DM would aid in personalized treatment in the future. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play many important roles in human cancers; hence, we proceeded to address the primary hypothesis that there is a miRNA expression signature capable of predicting DM for NPC patients.Methods and results
The expression of 734 miRNAs was measured in 125 (Training) and 121 (Validation) clinically annotated NPC diagnostic biopsy samples. A 4-miRNA expression signature associated with risk of developing DM was identified by fitting a penalized Cox Proportion Hazard regression model to the Training data set (HR 8.25; p < 0.001), and subsequently validated in an independent Validation set (HR 3.2; p = 0.01). Pathway enrichment analysis indicated that the targets of miRNAs associated with DM appear to be converging on cell-cycle pathways.Conclusions
This 4-miRNA signature adds to the prognostic value of the current "gold standard" of TNM staging. In-depth interrogation of these 4-miRNAs will provide important biological insights that could facilitate the discovery and development of novel molecularly targeted therapies to improve outcome for future NPC patients.
SUBMITTER: Bruce JP
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4414210 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Bruce Jeff P JP Hui Angela B Y AB Shi Wei W Perez-Ordonez Bayardo B Weinreb Ilan I Xu Wei W Haibe-Kains Benjamin B Waggott Daryl M DM Boutros Paul C PC O'Sullivan Brian B Waldron John J Huang Shao Hui SH Chen Eric X EX Gilbert Ralph R Liu Fei-Fei FF
Oncotarget 20150201 6
<h4>Purpose</h4>Despite significant improvement in locoregional control in the contemporary era of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) treatment, patients still suffer from a significant risk of distant metastasis (DM). Identifying those patients at risk of DM would aid in personalized treatment in the future. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play many important roles in human cancers; hence, we proceeded to address the primary hypothesis that there is a miRNA expression signature capable of predicting DM for NPC ...[more]