Background: microRNAs, which expound the transcriptional regulation of gene expression, have been validated as prognostic markers in many tumors. The deregulated expression of microRNAs has been shown to aid classification of tumors and predict outcome in many tumors including breast PTs. The aim of our study is to investigate the clinical significance and prognostic value of microRNAs in PTs to identify a biomarker which has the potential for predicting prognosis and target therapy.
Methods: Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to detect the expression level of microRNA20b in 123 breast PTs patients. The correlations between the expression of microRNA20b and clinicopathological parameters were investigated. The prognostic significance of microRNA20b was investigated by the Kaplan-Meier survival and Cox proportional hazards regression model.
Results: The expression level of microRNA20b increased with the increase in the tumor grade (p < 0.05). High expression of microRNA20b correlated with stromal overgrowth, marked stromal cellularity, high atypia of stromal cells, infiltrative tumor margin, high mitotic activity, tumor grade, local recurrence and metastasis (p < 0.05). High expression of microRNA20b correlated with the shorter disease-free survival (DFS) (log-rank test, p < 0.001). Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that microRNA20b was an independent prognostic indicator for breast PTs patients.
Conclusion: The study demonstrated the promising potential of applying microRNA20b as a prognostic biomarker in PT patients.
Keywords: Phyllodes tumor; Prognosis; microRNA/miRNA; microRNA20b/miRNA20b; qRT-PCR.