To the best our knowledge, this is the first literature that reports plasma and urine miRNA can serve desirable biomarkers for detecting early HBV-relative HCC. miR-93-5p was found to be significantly upregulated in cancer tissue of HBV-relative HCC in agreement with the two datasets of GSE69580 and GSE10694 from GEO. Notably, miR-93-5p in plasma and urine was also significantly increased in patients with early, advanced and total HBV-relative HCC cases. The expression of miR-93-5p was significantly and positively correlated between any two kinds of samples (tissue vs. plasma; tissue vs. urine, plasma vs. urine). Moreover, miR-93-5p in plasma and urine reduced significantly after over one month of the surgery and returned to normal levels. Take into consideration the results mentioned above, miR-93-5p was probably derived from HCC, enter the circulation, and secreted into urine at the end. Finally, ROC analysis showed both plasmatic and urinary miR-93-5p could serve as a novel biomarker for early HBV-relative HCC with desirable diagnostic accuracy. And their discriminatory power was similar.
Despite major efforts and advancing science and technology, a large proportion of HCC patients without specific symptoms are still diagnosed at advanced stage when curative treatments are lacking. Diagnosis of HCC usually depends on imaging abdominal ultrasonography, imagnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) and serum AFP. But MIR and CT are costly and not easily available in developing countries. Ultrasonography can detect large tumor but fails to detect small lesions, and because this procedure is operator-dependent, the diagnostic performance varies. AFP is the most frequently used biomarkers for HCC. However, the accuracy of AFP is not desirable with sensitivity ranged 46–59% and specificity ranged 87–93%. HCC at early stage are often missed by AFP analysis, and serum AFP levels are also overexpressed in patients with benign liver diseases, such as hepatitis and cirrhosis [12]. In this study, serum AFP still showed low sensitive in detecting HCC. Around 30% of early and advanced HCC showed high AFP levels (> 400 ng/mL). Accordingly, Asia–Pacific clinical practice guidelines [13] and American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases practice guidelines [14] do not recommend AFP as a diagnostic test for HCC. Hence, robust biomarkers are vital for early detection and diagnosis of HCC. In particular, biomarkers for early HCC is low-cost, non-invasive, and readily available.
Numerous microRNAs in tissue and circulation are demonstrated to be biomarkers with good sensitivities and specificities for various disease. Dozens of studies prove that microRNAs in tissue [15], circulation [16, 17], and several body fluids including urine [18] are highly stable and readily detected. They can resist degradation at high and low temperatures, in strong acids and bases, and by RNase digest. Hence any one of microRNAs can be readily detected in any kinds of samples.
The mechanism of how microRNAs exist in urine remains elusive. It is postulated that miRNAs are secreted into the blood both passively after cell apoptosis and necrosis due to tissue damage, and actively through microvesicles [19]. MicroRNAs in the blood enter and pass through the glomerulus and nephrons of kidneys, and then travel via urinary tract to the outside of the body in urine. 1,000–2,000mL of urine are normally produced every day in a human based on fluid intake and kidney function.
Both plasmatic and urinary miR-93-5p showed good diagnostic values outperforming AFP for detecting early HBV-related HCC. And miR-93-5p in both kinds of samples exhibited similar diagnostic performance. In addition, urine sampling is non-invasive, and readily performed in a human, while it is relatively expensive, invasive, and cause discomfort or even bloodborne diseases to individuals by blood drawing. Hence urinary miR-93-5p can outplace plasmatic miR-93-5p to server as a more promising biomarker in the help of diagnosing early HBV-related HCC.
Although the functional experiments of miR-93-5p were not performed in our study, some studies have found miR-93-5p increases significantly compared with adjacent non-caner tissue and act as an oncomir. Consistent with our study, Ohta et al. finds that miR-93-5p expression is enhanced in HCC tissue. And it increases proliferation, migration and invasion of HCC cells via activating c-Met/PI3K/Akt pathway activity [20]. Ji et al. finds miR-93 is significantly upregulated in HCC tissues, enhances HCC invasion and metastasis by EMT through targeting PDCD4 [21]. Work carried out by Xue et al. showed that Exosomal miR-93-5p inhanced proliferation and invasion in HCC via directly inhibiting TIMP2/TP53INP1/CDKN1A [22]. Shi et al. identified that miR-93-5p was overexpressed in HCC specimens and cell lines, leads to poor outcomes in HCC patients, and promotes proliferation, migration via a microRNA-93-5p/MAP3K2/c-Jun positive feedback circuit [23]. In contrast, downregulation of miR-93-5p expression results in reducing cell proliferation, migration, and clonogenicity of HCC cells [24]. Taken together, because miRNAs act as key molecule in HCC development, it provides the rationale for its use as also promising target for new HCC therapies.
A few limitations exist in this study. First, miRNA microarray was not conducted in this work. So other potential miRNA biomarkers may not be found. Second, the low number of patient samples of HBV-related HCC represents a limitation in interpreting our results and evaluating the methods used. But we believe that the study power found in this work will be largely increased when more HCC cases are enrolled. Third, the patients were limited to a Chinese Han population. The ability of miR-93-5p to detect early HCC not associated with HBV and in multi-center worldwide with other ethnicities merits investigation.