Serum miR-629 is a novel molecular marker for diagnosis and the prognosis of pancreatic cancer.

OBJECTIVE

Increasing evidence indicates that dysregulation of miRNAs is involved in tumor progression and development. We aimed to determine potential values of miR-629 as a serum diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in pancreatic cancer (PC).

PATIENTS AND METHODS

MiR-629 expression levels in PC tissues and serum were measured by quantitative Real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Receiver operating characteristic analysis (ROC) was utilized to assess the predictive power of serum miR-629 for PC. Then, the associations of serum miR-629 expression levels with clinicopathological features and prognosis were evaluated.

RESULTS

We found that the expression levels of miR-629 were significantly upregulated in both PC tissues and serum in comparison with matched normal tissues and healthy controls, respectively. Importantly, serum miR-629 could efficiently screen PC patients from healthy controls (AUC=0.765). The diagnosis capability of serum miR-629 was significantly higher than that of CA19-9, and the combination of two molecules had higher diagnosis capacity. Higher expression of serum miR-629 in PC patients was associated with advanced TNM stage (p=0.000) and distant metastasis (p=0.003). Moreover, Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with high expression of serum miR-629 had significantly shorter overall survival (p=0.0022) and disease-free survival (p=0.0003) than the low expression group. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that serum miR-629 was a significant and independent prognostic predictor for both overall survival and disease-free survival of PC patients.

CONCLUSIONS

This study suggested serum miR-629 may be a potential biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of PC.