ABSTRACT
Objective MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in the chemoradiotherapy efficacy of rectal cancer (RC).This study aimed to screen the chemoradiotherapy-associated microRNAs and their target genes of RC through bioinformatics approaches in order to promote the fundamental study of RC chemoradiotherapy.Methods The chemoradiotherapy-associated microRNAs were manually searched through the published papers via PubMed and its target genes were identified by comprehensively analyzing these public data of microRNA-mRNA and gene expression profiles.Both gene ontology (GO) and pathway analysis of the target genes were performed by DAVID and IPA programs,respectively.Results A total of 38 microRNAs were collected from PubMed,and 3 545 putative target genes were inferred from the integrated microRNA-mRNA associations,among them,131 were differentially expressed (DE) (P ＜ 0.05) in the selected gene expression profile (GSE35452).The GO and pathway enrichment analyses indicated that the DE genes were closely involved in the responses of chemoradiotherapy of RC.Conclusions These microRNAs and their regulated DE genes may contribute to the molecular mechanism of the differential efficacy of RC chemoradiotherapy,which may provide a theoretical reference for predicting the response of RC to chemoradiotherapy.