BioProject

Circulating microRNAs have recently emerged as a new class of promising non-invasive cancer biomarkers. More...

Circulating microRNAs have recently emerged as a new class of promising non-invasive cancer biomarkers. The purpose of this study was the identification by a high-throughput approach (miRNA microarray) of circulating miRNAs associated with breast cancer-derived distant metastasis. To achieve this goal, we resorted to archival plasma samples collected from patients in the control arm of a randomized clinical trial on stage I breast cancer. We compared plasma miRNA levels in patients that developed distant metastasis after a radical or conservative surgery and in those long-term disease-free. Microarray results were technically and independently validated by Real Time PCR. Subsequent in vitro, in vivo and in silico analyses were performed to investigate the miRNA biological/clinical significance in relation with breast cancer progression. We demonstrated that high circulating miR-1246 levels were associated to distant metastasis and that high tissue expression of this miRNA was correlated with unfavorable outcome in ER+HER2- breast cancer patients. In addition, miR-1246 expression was also found to be related with stem-like features. Overall design: 64 samples (32 patients with metastasis and 32 patients with no metastasis) were considered from a total of 208 hybridized samples collected between 1987 and 2004 (including 94 paired samples according to tumor ER status, age at drawing, drawing year, time from surgery, 7 additional samples from 'no evidence of disease' (NED) patients, 10 references, 1 healthy donor and 2 replicated samples) Less...