Dysregulated miRNA in a cancer-prone environment: A study of gastric non-neoplastic mucosa

Understanding cancer-prone environments is important to efficiently detect and prevent cancers. The associations between miRNA and cancer-prone environments are still largely unknown in gastric cancer (GC). Six miRNAs that are differentially expressed during gastric carcinogenesis were selected, and quantitative real-time PCR was performed in an independent training set (fresh non-tumor and tumor samples from 18 GC patients) and validation sets (set 1 with formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded non-tumor and tumor samples from 19 solitary GC and set 2 with 37 multiple GC patients). The results were compared with those of 37 gastric mucosa from 20 healthy volunteers. The expression levels of miR-26a, miR-375, and miR-1260 in gastric mucosa from healthy volunteers were statistically higher than that of non-tumorous gastric mucosa located 3 cm apart from the GC in the training set (miR-26a, P < 0.0001; miR-375, P = 0.0049; miR-1260, P = 0.0172), validation set 1 (miR-26a and miR-375, P < 0.0001; miR-1260, P = 0.0008), and validation set 2 (miR-26a, miR-375, and miR-1260, P < 0.0001). And a combination of miR-26a and miR-1260 showed the highest area under the curve value of 0.89. miRNAs are differentially expressed in non-neoplastic gastric mucosa and can be used as a biomarker to predict cancer-prone environments.