Peripheral blood non-canonical small non-coding RNAs as novel biomarkers in lung cancer and pulmonary tuberculosis (discovery cohort)

ABSTRACT: One unmet challenge in current lung cancer diagnosis is to accurately differentiate lung cancer patients from those with other lung diseases with similar clinical symptoms and radiological features. Previous studies have reported cases of misdiagnosis for patients with lung cancer mimicking pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) or for TB patients with multiple lung nodules mimicking lung cancer progression, which is concerning for clinical practice in TB-endemic countries/regions. Here, we develop a molecular signature composed of non-canonical small non-coding RNAs in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), including tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs), rRNA-derived small RNAs (rsRNAs), and YRNA-derived small RNAs (ysRNAs). This signature consists of i) the tsRNAs derived from tRNA-Ala, tRNA-Asn, tRNA-Leu, tRNA-Lys, and tRNA-Tyr that are upregulated in the lung cancer patients relative to the healthy controls and patients with pulmonary TB, ii) the rsRNAs derived from rRNA-5S that are upregulated in the lung cancer patients but downregulated in TB patients relative to the controls, and iii) the ysRNAs originating from YRNA-RNY1 that are downregulated in the lung cancer patients but upregulated in the TB patients compared with the controls. This diagnostic signature discriminates between healthy controls, lung cancer patients, and pulmonary TB subjects with high accuracy in both the discovery and validation cohorts. We conclude that the PBMC tsRNAs, rsRNAs, and ysRNAs are informative for both screening for and discriminating between lung cancer and pulmonary TB.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE148861 | GEO | 2020/11/16

REPOSITORIES: GEO