Diagnostic potential of micro RNAs expression profiles in breast and gynecologic cancer

Purpose: Various microRNAs act as key regulatory factors in tumorbiological processes, with both, oncogenic as well as tumor suppressive functions. This study focused on the putative biomarker properties of 24 microRNA types, investigated in three breast cancer (BC), endometrial cancer (EC) and ovarian cancer (OC) in vitro models, respectively, to determine their diagnostic potential.

Material and methods: The expression pattern of 24 microRNA specimen were investigated in three established BC, EC and OC cell lines, respectively. Quantitative analysis was performed by RNA isolation and subsequent realtime PCR. Therefore, relative quantification of the different microRNA types resulted from ΔC_t method, normalized against medium expression values of the housekeeping micrRNAs RNU 48 and microRNA 16.

Results: Significant differences were found in the expression pattern of distinct microRNA specimen, quantified as median expression levels for each tumor entity. According to these data, distinct tumor type specific microRNA expression signatures could be identified, that bear the potential to discriminate among BC, EC and OC.

Conclusion: We were able to demonstrate the feasibility to detect distinct miRNA expression profiles for each tumor entity. We hypothesize, that these distinct pattern offer the possibility for specific discrimination between breast, endometrium and ovarian cancer. Based on the current results, the biomarker function of microRNAs in cancer management could be a useful diagnostic feature to identify a tumor entity specific microRNA signature.