Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Inside MicroRNA Target Sites: Influence in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Risk

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cancer and is responsible for over 700,000 deaths worldwide each year. Although diagnostic measures and surgical interventions have improved in recent years, the absence of early-stage symptoms, lack of adequate biomarkers, and the acquired resistance to chemotherapeutic agents still poses a problem. Previous studies have demonstrated that non-coding nucleic acids that regulate gene expression, known as micro-RNAs (miRNA), can be associated with the development of cancer. The main purpose of this investigation was to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) inside miRNA target sites that could influence HCC tumor susceptibility. First, we used the National Center for Biotechnology Information's Gene Expression Omnibus (NCBI GEO) to identify genes that were highly expressed in HCC. Then HCC patient raw read data were downloaded from the Sequence Read Archive database, mapped, sorted, and then analyzed. Our analyses identified SNPs in 30 miRNAs located on AKR1B10 that could be associated with the risk of HCC. © FASEB.