MiRNA-330 and MiRNA-621 as Significant Tools for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Prediction

Background and Aim: Hepatocellular carcinoma is ranked as the second most frequent cause of cancer-related death globally. In Egypt, liver cancer forms 70.48% of all liver tumors. The role of alphafetoprotein (AFP) in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is getting smaller owing to the advances in new markers and imaging modalities. Serum micro RNAs are full of non-invasive biomarkers. MiRNA-330 and MiRNA -621 could be novel potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for HCC. Our study observed the significance of miRNA 330 and miRNA 621 in cases of HCC patients and comparing these results with those in cirrhotic patients preparing to use them for prediction of HCC development.

Methods: This study included two hundred and one candidates; 67 healthy volunteers, 67 patients with cirrhosis and 67 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. HCC diagnosis was confirmed using imaging techniques and tumor staging was also done. MiRNA 330 and miRNA 621 levels expression were measured by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR).

Results: HCC patients had significantly higher miRNA 330 and miRNA 621 levels than patients with cirrhosis and healthy controls. There is a statistically significant difference between different grades of hepatocellular carcinoma patients in their microRNA 330 levels, where on applying pairwise comparison we found that grade I had significantly higher miRNA 330 folds than grade III.

Conclusions: Our study concluded the significance of miRNA 330 and miRNA 621 in cases of HCC patients as they had significantly higher mRNA 330 and mRNA 621 levels than patients with cirrhosis and healthy controls. MiRNA 330 and miRNA 621 are considered as significant tools for prediction of HCC occurrence.

Keywords: HCC, Human Genome, MicroRNAs, miRNA, Biomarkers.