miR-30a-5p together with miR-210-3p as a promising biomarker for non-small cell lung cancer: A preliminary study

BACKGROUND: Although an immense effort has been made to develop novel diagnostic methods and treatment strategies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the survival rate of this disease has remained virtually unchanged. Small non-coding RNAs called microRNAs (miRNAs) have appeared to be very promising biomarkers of cancer including NSCLC. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the expression level of six miRNAs, and subsequently we evaluated their diagnostic ability and their clinical significance. METHODS: We performed an analysis in 50 paired cancer and non-cancerous lung tissue samples collected from NSCLC patients. The RT-qPCR technique was used to investigate the expression profile. RESULTS: Obtained results indicate that miR-30a-5p, miR-126-3p and miR-486-5p are downregulated, while miR-205-5p and miR-210-3p are upregulated in NSCLC tissue. Moreover, performed stepwise discriminant analysis determined the model including miR-30a-5p and miR-210-3p which tested on the test set (n = 30) revealed an AUC of 0.969 and provided 100% sensitivity and 80% specificity in discriminating NSCLC tissue from non-cancerous lung tissue. CONCLUSIONS: The present preliminary study demonstrated that five tested miRNAs were deregulated in cancer tissue. Moreover, miR-30a-5p together with miR-210-3p with excellent sensitivity and acceptable specificity may distinguish cancer tissue form non-cancerous tissue and thus may become a potential diagnostic biomarker for NSCLC.