Abstract 160: Altered levels of circulating microRNAs in the plasma of non-small cell lung cancer patients: Potential as biomarker

Abstract The development of molecular markers for lung cancer could offset the deficiencies of currently available early detection and staging approaches. To this end, blood markers are particularly attractive since samples are obtained in a minimally invasive way at any stage of lung carcinogenesis. In this study we compared the levels of 10 microRNAs (miR-21, miR-31, miR-155, miR-147, miR-218, miR-377, miR-551b*, miR-569, miR-1283, and miR-1468) in the blood plasma of 27 non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and 38 healthy controls, using quantitative reverse transcription- polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), to determine if these miRNAs might have a diagnostic value for NSCLC. The results of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), which measures the ability of the test to correctly classify those with and without the disease, were 0.98, 1.00, 0.8, and 0.98 for miR-21, miR-155, miR-377 and miR-1468, respectively, indicating that plasma levels of miR-21, miR-155, miR-377 and miR-1468 are powerful discriminators between patients and controls. At the optimum cutoff point for the cycle threshold (CT) value of the four miRNAs, the sensitivities of miR-21, miR-155, miR-377 and miR-1468 were 92.5%, 100%, 84%, and 100%, respectively; the corresponding values for the test specificity were 100%, 100%, 88%, and 100%, respectively. These results indicate the great potential of miR-21, miR-155, miR-377 and miR-1468 as diagnostic markers for NSCLC but need to be proved in prospective studies with larger samples. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 160. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-160