Deregulation of selected microRNAs in sinonasal squamous cell Carcinoma: Searching for Potential Prognostic Biomarkers
Abstract
Sinonasal carcinomas are head and neck tumors arising from nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses characterized by unfavorable outcome, difficult treatment, diagnosis and prognosis. MicroRNAs are key molecules in the regulation of development and progression of cancer and their expression profiles could be used as prognostic biomarkers, to predict patients' survival and response to treatment.
In this study, we used quantitative real time PCR with TaqMan(R) Advanced miRNA Assays to investigate relative expression values of selected microRNAs in a unique set of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples obtained from 46 patients with sinonasal squamous cell carcinoma. Our results showed statistically significant upregulation of three mature microRNAs: miR-9-5p (fold change: 6.80), miR-9-3p (fold change: 3.07) and let-7d (fold change: 3.93) sinonasal carcinoma patients.
Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Logrank test identified connection between higher expression of miR-9-5p and longer survival of the patients (P = 0.0264). Lower expression of let-7d was detected in the patients with impaired survival and higher expression of miR-137 was linked to shorter survival of the patients.
We also identified several correlations between expression of studied microRNAs and recorded clinicopathological data. Higher expression of miR-137, lower expression of let-7d correlated with local recurrence (P = 0.045 and P = 0.025), lower expression of miR-9-5p and higher expression of miR-155-5p correlated with regional recurrence (P = 0.045 and P = 0.036).
Higher expression of miR-9-3p correlated with occupational risk (P = 0.031), presence of vascular invasion (P = 0.013) and perineural invasion (P = 0.031). Higher expression of miR-155-5p was present in the samples originating from maxillary sinus (P = 0.011), cN1-3 classified tumors (P = 0.009) and G2-3 classified tumors (P = 0.017).
In conclusion, our study supports the hypothesis of future prospect to use miRNA expression as prognostic biomarkers of squamous cell sinonasal carcinoma. Especially, miR-9-5p and miR-9-3p seem to be important members of sinonasal cancer pathogenesis.