Biomarker exploration of microRNA-203 as a promising substrate for predicting poor survival outcome in colorectal cancer

BACKGROUND: Increasing studies indicated that microRNA-203 (miR-203) may play an important part in the prognosis of CRC. Nevertheless, the prognostic and influential mechanism of miR-203 expression in CRC remains to be inconclusive. Accordingly, we conducted the current study to investigate the biomarker performance of miR-203 in CRC. METHODS: In the present study, we conducted an evidence synthesis of the published literatures to identify the prognostic roles of miR-203 in patients with CRC. Moreover, several bioinformatics methods were applied for exploring the biomarker roles of miR-203. RESULTS: It was demonstrated that elevated miR-203 expression was clearly related to worse overall survival (HR: 1.55, 95% CI: 1.07–2.24, P = 0.021) for CRC. The gene Ontology (GO) analysis indicated that miR-203 targets were primarily involved in a series of GO items closely associated with the molecular pathogenesis of CRC. The pathway analysis exhibited the potential signal pathways of miR-203 involved in CRC including pathways in cancer, wnt pathway, prolactin signaling pathway, proteoglycans in cancer, FoxO pathway, focal adhesion and Ras pathway. By constructing a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network of the targets of miR-203, ten crucial proteins and a significant network module were retrieved and found to serve important roles in the molecular pathogenesis of CRC. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicated that miR-203 may function as a promising biomarker to monitor CRC survival outcomes and progression. Notably, large-scale prospective cohort studies and biological experiments are required to confirm our conclusions.