Evaluation of miR-130 family members as circulating biomarkers for the diagnosis of bladder cancer.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Previous research has shown that the miR-130 family is closely related to the occurrence and development of bladder cancer. We hope to use the miR-130 family members as new, non-invasive, and easily detectable biomarkers for bladder cancer. METHODS: We analyzed 428 cases in The Cancer Genome Atlas-Bladder Urothelial Carcinoma database and verified that the miR-130 family members were significantly overexpressed in bladder cancer. A total of 74 bladder cancer patients and 90 controls were enrolled. The relative expression of the miR-130 family in serum was detected using quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The diagnostic efficacy of the miR-130 family members was determined using the receiver operating characteristic method (ROC), and a diagnostic panel was built using logistic regression. The results of the study were further confirmed in an external validation set of 492 samples from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. RESULTS: The expression of the miR-130 family members (except for miR-301b-3p) in the serum of bladder cancer patients was higher than that in the controls. The diagnostic capabilities for bladder cancer were 0.847 (miR-130a-3p), 0.762 (miR-130b-3p), and 0.892 (miR-301a-3p). We established a three-miRNA panel with an area under the ROC curve as high as 0.961, indicating that it is a promising clinical diagnostic biomarker of bladder cancer with high sensitivity and specificity. CONCLUSION: The expression levels of miR-130 family members in serum can effectively distinguish the bladder cancer patients from healthy controls. This finding will facilitate the clinical diagnosis of bladder cancer.