Salivary miRNAs as non-invasive biomarkers of hepatocellular carcinoma: a pilot study

PeerJ

article

Arshiya Mariam¹  Galen Miller-Atkins¹  Amika Moro²  Alejandro I. Rodarte²  Shirin Siddiqi²  Lou-Anne Acevedo-Moreno²  J. Mark Brown³  Daniela S. Allende⁵  Federico Aucejo²  Daniel M. Rotroff¹ 

[1] Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic;Department of General Surgery, Cleveland Clinic;Department of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences, Cleveland Clinic;Center for Microbiome and Human Health, Cleveland Clinic;Department of Pathology, Cleveland Clinic;Endocrinology and Metabolism Institute, Cleveland Clinic

关键词: Transcriptomics;    Biomarker;    Hepatocellular carcinoma;    Liver cancer;    Saliva;    Non-invasive;    Cirrhosis;    Machine-learning;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.12715

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Background Improved detection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is needed, as current detection methods, such as alpha fetoprotein (AFP) and ultrasound, suffer from poor sensitivity. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that regulate many cellular functions and impact cancer development and progression. Notably, miRNAs are detectable in saliva and have shown potential as non-invasive biomarkers for a number of cancers including breast, oral, and lung cancers. Here, we present, to our knowledge, the first report of salivary miRNAs in HCC and compare these findings to patients with cirrhosis, a high-risk cohort for HCC. Methods We performed small RNA sequencing in 20 patients with HCC and 19 with cirrhosis. Eleven patients with HCC had chronic liver disease, and analyses were performed with these samples combined and stratified by the presence of chronic liver disease. P values were adjusted for multiple comparisons using a false discovery rate (FDR) approach and miRNA with FDR P < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Differential expression of salivary miRNAs was compared to a previously published report of miRNAs in liver tissue of patients with HCC vs cirrhosis. Support vector machines and leave-one-out cross-validation were performed to determine if salivary miRNAs have predictive potential for detecting HCC. Results A total of 4,565 precursor and mature miRNAs were detected in saliva and 365 were significantly different between those with HCC compared to cirrhosis (FDR P < 0.05). Interestingly, 283 of these miRNAs were significantly downregulated in patients with HCC. Machine-learning identified a combination of 10 miRNAs and covariates that accurately classified patients with HCC (AUC = 0.87). In addition, we identified three miRNAs that were differentially expressed in HCC saliva samples and in a previously published study of miRNAs in HCC tissue compared to cirrhotic liver tissue. Conclusions This study demonstrates, for the first time, that miRNAs relevant to HCC are detectable in saliva, that salivary miRNA signatures show potential to be highly sensitive and specific non-invasive biomarkers of HCC, and that additional studies utilizing larger cohorts are needed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY