Clinical utility of circulating MicroRNA-21 in breast cancer

Background: Breast cancer remains the most frequent type of cancer in females worldwide, with nearly 1.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2012. In Egypt, breast cancer is the most common malignancy among females accounting for 18.3% of total cancer cases in Egypt. Unfortunately, the traditional imaging techniques as well as the currently accepted markers such as serum CEA and CA 15.3 cannot adequately identify early stage patients. MiRNAs are a class of endogenous non-coding RNAs tilde 22 nucleotides in length, which regulate gene expression primarily at the post-transcriptional level and thus are involved in many cellular processes, such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. One of which is miRNA-21 and its alterations have been shown to play critical roles in breast cancer

Materials and Methods: This is a pilot retrospective case-control study. We quantified serum microRNA-21 expression levels using qRT-PCR in 30 breast cancer patients and another 10 controls in comparison to CA 15-3 as a conventional marker of breast cancer used in clinical practice

Results: MiRNA-21 expression levels in early diagnosis of breast cancer patients with a superior both sensitivity and specificity of 100% specially in comparison with CA 15.3 that displayed 70% sensitivity and 60% specificity

Conclusion: MiRNA-21 levels are significantly higher in breast cancer patients compared to healthy subjects. Furthermore, we found that increased miRNA-21 expression levels correlated with progression of breast cancer stages

Cytokeratin 20: a new promising marker for colorectal carcinomas

Colorectal carcinoma [CRC] is one of the most common malignancies. Inspire of successful resection of the primary Tumour, metastasis is one of the most important factors determining the patient's prognosis. The present study was initiated to detect disseminated cancer cells in LNs and peripheral blood of patient's with CRC via detection of cytokeratin 20 [CK20] mRNA expression by conventional and real time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction [RT-PCR]. This study included 34 patients with early stage CRC who have undergone total tumor resection, and were proved to be node negative histopathology. The study also included two control groups; a pathological control group [n = 10] suffering from ulcerative colitis and a healthy control group [n = 21], who have undergone pelvic repair for rectal prolapse and were otherwise completely free. For all subjects, serum CEA was measured in addition to cull routine laboratory investigations. Conventional PCR for detection of CK20 mRNA was [lone in both peripheral blood and lymph node samples for all participants. Whereas, quantitative real time RT-PCR for detection of CK20 mRNA was done for lymph node samples of the patient group only. Results of' the present study showed that all peripheral blood samples tested by conventional PCR were consistently negative for CK20 mRNA expression, whereas, mRNA was detected in the LN tissues of 16 of the 34 patients included in this study. Quantitative real-time RT-PCR appeared to be more sensitive than conventional PCR as it was able to detect CK20 mRNA in 20 out of the 34 patients included in this study. Based on the results of our realtime PCR, time patient group was divided into 20 patients with detectable mRNA and 14 with undetectable CK20 mRNA. The results of CEA levels were elevated in the former goup than time latter one, however this elevation was not statistically significant. on comparing nodal expression of CK20 mRNA in different histologic tumour types, 85. 7% of mucinous carcinoma patients showed nodal expression versus 51.9% of adenocarcinoma patients. Patients with Dukes' stag B2 showed 92.8% nodal expression versus only 35% patients with Dukes' B1 stage. Poorly differentiated tumours showed 100% nodal expression of CK20 mRNA versus 38.1% for time moderately differentiated and 66.7% for the well differentiated tumour group. In conclusion, CK20 mRNA is a valuable tool for monitoring early stage dissemination of CRC malignant cells. Real time PCR provides a more sensitive and reliable technique for detection of' disseminated cancer cells in CRC patients than the traditional PCR technique. Besides, CK20 mRNA is a promising predictor of poor prognosis being increased in mucinous, poorly differentiated and Dukes' B2 CRC patients