RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Most BC studies on candidate microRNAs were tissue specimen based. Recently, there has been a focus on the study of cell-free circulating miRNAs as promising biomarkers in (BC) diagnosis and prognosis. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the circulating levels of miR-10b and its target soluble E- cadherin as potentially easily accessible biomarkers for breast cancer. METHODS: Sixty-one breast cancer patients and forty-eight age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers serving as a control group were enrolled in the present study. Serum samples were used to assess miRNA10b expression by TaqMan miRNA assay technique. In addition, soluble E-cadherin expression level in serum was determined using ELISA technique. RESULT: Circulating miR-10b expression level and serum sE-cadherin was significantly upregulated in patients with BC compared to controls. Moreover, serum miR-10b displayed progressive up-regulation in advanced stages with higher level in metastatic compared to non-metastatic BC. Additionally, the combined use of both serum miR-10b and sE-cadherin revealed the highest sensitivity and specificity for detection of BC metastasis (92.9% and 97.9% respectively) with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.98, 95% CI (0.958-1.00). CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that circulating miR-10b could be utilized as a potential non-invasive serum biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer with better performance to predict BC metastasis achieved on measuring it simultaneously with serum sE-cadherin. Further studies with a large cohort of patients are warranted to validate the serum biomarker for breast cancer management.
