Sarah Schott

Circulating cf-miRNA as a more appropriate surrogate liquid biopsy marker than cfDNA for ovarian cancer

AbstractOvarian cancer (OC) is an aggressive disease, primarily diagnosed in late stages with only 20% of patients surviving more than 5 years. Liquid biopsy markers have great potential to improve current diagnostic and prognostic methods. Here, we compared miRNAs and DNA methylation in matched plasma, whole blood and tissues as a surrogate marker for OC. We found that while both cfDNA and cf-miRNAs levels were upregulated in OC compared to patients with benign lesions or healthy controls, only cf-miRNA levels were an independent prognosticator of survival. Following on our previous work, we found members of the miR-200 family, miR-200c and miR-141 to be upregulated in both plasma and matched tissues of OC patients which correlated with adverse clinical features. We could also show that the upregulation of miR-200c and -141 correlated with promoter DNA hypomethylation in tissues, but not in plasma or matched whole blood samples. As cf-miRNAs are more easily obtained and very stable in blood, we conclude that they might serve as a more appropriate surrogate liquid biopsy marker than cfDNA for OC.

A novel circulating miRNA panel for non-invasive ovarian cancer diagnosis and prognosis

AbstractBackgroundOvarian cancer (OC) is an aggressive disease, primarily diagnosed in late stages with only 20% of patients surviving more than 5 years after diagnosis. There is a pending need to improve current diagnostics and prognostics.MethodsIn this study, we investigated total circulating cell-free microRNA (cf-miRNA) levels as well as a panel of cf-miRNAs in the plasma of OC patients (n = 100), patients with benign lesions (n = 45) and healthy controls (n = 99).ResultsHigh levels of cf-miRNAs correlated with unfavourable clinical features and were an independent prognosticator of patient survival. By mining NGS data, we identified a signature panel of seven individual cf-miRNAs which could distinguish controls from benign cases with an AUC of 0.77 and controls from cancer cases with an AUC of 0.87. Importantly, in combination with the current gold-standard marker, CA-125, the panel could predict early OC with an AUC of 0.93.ConclusionOur findings highlight the potential of cf-miRNA levels as well as individual cf-miRNAs for OC diagnosis and prognosis that warrants further clinical evaluation.