Extracellular vesicles miR-210 as a potential biomarker for diagnosis and survival prediction of oral squamous cell carcinoma patients.

BACKGROUND

The identification of early diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is an unmet clinical need. We hypothesized that extracellular vesicles miR-210 expression (EV-miR-210) could be a potential biomarker for OSCC diagnosis and follow-up.

METHODS

The expression of EV-miR-210 was measured in the plasma of OSCC patients (n = 30) and compared to that of controls (n = 14).

RESULTS

The median EV-miR-210 expression was significantly higher in OSCC patients compared to controls who had often, undetectable levels (p < 0.0001). We performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for discriminating OSCC cases from controls. EV-miR-210 yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.9513 with sensitivity 92.3% and specificity 86.6%. Kaplan-Meier curves indicated that high EV-miR-210 expression was associated with worse 3 years' survival (p < 0.05). Cox regression hazard model indicated that high EV-miR-210, G2, and G3 grading and pathological nodal status (pN)>1 were independent predictors of worse survival in OSCC patients.

CONCLUSION

These preliminary data suggest that EV-mir-210 may be a novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in OSCC.