Tsang Hin Fung, Pei Xiao Meng, Wong Yin Kwan Evelyn, Wong Sze Chuen Cesar
Department of Clinical Laboratory and Pathology, Hong Kong Adventist Hospital, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Department of Health Technology and Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Int J Mol Sci. 2024 Mar 5;25(5):3012. doi: 10.3390/ijms25053012.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most prevalent cancers and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in developed countries. Early CRC may have no symptoms and symptoms usually appear with more advanced diseases. Regular screening can identify people who are at increased risk of CRC in order to offer earlier treatment. A cost-effective non-invasive platform for the screening and monitoring of CRC patients allows early detection and appropriate treatment of the disease, and the timely application of adjuvant therapy after surgical operation is needed. In this study, a cohort of 71 plasma samples that include 48 colonoscopy- and histopathology-confirmed CRC patients with TNM stages I to IV were recruited between 2017 and 2019. Plasma mRNA profiling was performed in CRC patients using NanoString nCounter. Normalized data were analyzed using a Mann-Whitney U test to determine statistically significant differences between samples from CRC patients and healthy subjects. A multiple-group comparison of clinical phenotypes was performed using the Kruskal-Wallis H test for statistically significant differences between multiple groups. Among the 27 selected circulating mRNA markers, all of them were found to be overexpressed (gene expression fold change > 2) in the plasma of patients from two or more CRC stages. In conclusion, NanoString-based targeted plasma CRC-associated mRNAs circulating the marker panel that can significantly distinguish CRC patients from a healthy population were developed for the non-invasive diagnosis of CRC using peripheral blood samples.
结直肠癌（CRC）是最常见的癌症之一，也是发达国家癌症死亡的第二大主要原因。早期结直肠癌可能没有症状，症状通常在疾病进展到更晚期时出现。定期筛查可以识别出患结直肠癌风险增加的人群，以便提供更早的治疗。一个具有成本效益的用于筛查和监测结直肠癌患者的非侵入性平台能够实现疾病的早期检测和适当治疗，并且术后需要及时应用辅助治疗。在本研究中，于2017年至2019年招募了一组71份血浆样本，其中包括48例经结肠镜检查和组织病理学确诊、TNM分期为I至IV期的结直肠癌患者。使用NanoString nCounter对结直肠癌患者进行血浆mRNA谱分析。使用曼-惠特尼U检验分析标准化数据，以确定结直肠癌患者样本与健康受试者样本之间的统计学显著差异。使用Kruskal-Wallis H检验对临床表型进行多组比较，以确定多组之间的统计学显著差异。在27个选定的循环mRNA标志物中，发现所有标志物在两个或更多结直肠癌阶段患者的血浆中均过度表达（基因表达倍数变化>2）。总之，开发了基于NanoString的靶向血浆结直肠癌相关mRNA循环标志物面板，该面板能够显著区分结直肠癌患者与健康人群，用于使用外周血样本对结直肠癌进行非侵入性诊断。
