Project description:Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a squamous cell carcinoma arising from the nasopharynx epithelium. So far, there have been no effective biomarkers to predict the radiosensitivity of NPC. Based on miRNA profile screened out from NPC patients with different radiosensitivity, this study was conducted to explore the correlation between serum miRNAs and radiotherapy response in NPC, and to identify biomarkers for predicting the radiosensitivity of NPC.
Project description:We identified total 174 significantly differentially expressed miRNAs between tumors and the normal tissues, and 109 miRNAs between serum from patients and serum from healthy individuals. There are only 10 common miRNAs. This suggests that only a small portion of tumor miRNAs are released into serum selectively. Interestingly, the expression change pattern of 28 miRNAs is opposite between breast cancer tumors and serum. Functional analysis shows that the differentially expressed miRNAs and their target genes form a complex interaction network affecting many biological processes and involving in cancer-related pathways such as prostate, basal cell carcinoma, acute myeloid leukymia, and more. A bunch of miRNAs have been demonstrated to be aberrantly expressed in cancer tumor tissue and serum. The miRNA signatures identified from the serum samples could serve as potential noninvasive diagnostic markers for breast cancer. The roles of the miRNAs in cancerigenesis is unclear. In this study, we generated the expression profiles of miRNAs from the paired breast cancer tumors, normal, tissue, and serum samples from eight patients using small RNA-sequencing. Serum samples from eight healthy individuals were used as normal controls.