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Updated: Aug 14, 2025
MicroRNA Based Liquid Biopsy: The Experience of the Plasma miRNA Signature Classifier MSC for Lung Cancer Screening
Published on: October 26, 2017
A liquid biopsy signature for predicting early recurrence in patients with gastric cancer
Keisuke Okuno1,2, Shuichi Watanabe3, Souvick Roy1
1Department of Molecular Diagnostics and Experimental Therapeutics, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Biomedical Research Center, Monrovia, CA, USA.
Background:
Gastric cancer (GC) patients who experience recurrence within the first year following surgery (early recurrence [ER]) exhibit worse prognosis. Herein, we established a microRNA-based liquid biopsy assay to predict ER in GC patients.
Methods:
A comprehensive biomarker discovery was performed by analysing miRNA expression profiling in 271 primary GC tumours. Thereafter, the expression of these biomarkers was validated in 290 GC cases, which included 218 tissues and 72 pre-treatment sera, from two independent institutions.
Results:
A panel of 8 miRNAs was identified during the initial biomarker discovery, and this panel could robustly predict ER in a tissue-based clinical cohort (area under the curve [AUC]: 0.81). Furthermore, a model combining the miRNA panel, microsatellite instability (MSI) status and tumour size exhibited superior predictive performance (AUC: 0.86), and was defined as a Prediction of Early Recurrence in GC (PERGC) signature, which was successfully validated in another independent cohort (AUC: 0.82). Finally, the PERGC signature was translated into a liquid biopsy assay (AUC: 0.81), and a multivariate regression analysis revealed this signature to be an independent predictor for ER (odds ratio: 11.20).
Conclusion:
We successfully established a miRNA-based liquid biopsy signature that robustly predicts the risk of ER in GC patients.
