A three-miRNA signature as promising non-invasive diagnostic marker for gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: Despite the declining incidence of gastric cancer, mortality rate remains high due to late presentation. We aimed to evaluate the sensitivity of miRNA as a diagnostic marker for gastric cancer in the circulation. METHODS: Plasma samples from 3 independent groups comprise 123 gastric cancer patients and 111 healthy controls for miRNA profiling from microarray screening. RESULTS: Microarray data showed that 25 miRNAs were upregulated in gastric cancer patients and 6 highly expressed miRNAs (miR-18a, miR-140-5p, miR-199a-3p, miR-627, miR-629 and miR-652) were selected for validation. In an independent validation set, levels of miR-627, miR-629 and miR-652 were significantly higher in gastric cancer patients than healthy controls (P <0.0001). An algorithm with improved sensitivity and specificity as gastric cancer classifier was adopted and validated in another random set of 15 plasma samples. Results showed that combination of 3 miRNAs obtained the highest area under curve, with a cut-off at 0.373, with a sensitivity of 86.7 % and a specificity of 85.5 %. CONCLUSION: This study revealed a three-miRNA signature as a promising classifier for gastric cancer, and greatly enhances the feasibility of circulating miRNAs as non-invasive diagnostic marker for this disease. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12943-015-0473-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.