Circular RNA profiling reveals a potential role of hsa_circ_IPCEF1 in papillary thyroid carcinoma

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a novel type of non-coding RNAs that are expressed across species and are implicated in cellular biological processes, displaying dysregulated expression in various tumorigeneses. Therefore, circRNA deregulation could be a crucial event in thyroid carcinoma. The present study identified circRNA signatures in several patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) to complement the understanding of PTC pathogenesis. Using microarray technology, the circRNA profiles in three pairs of PTC tumors and matching adjacent normal tissues were screened. Differentially expressed circRNAs were further validated by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR in whole blood from 57 pairs of subjects. Bioinformatics data analyses including miRNA response element prediction, Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway, competing endogenous RNA and KEGG Orthology-Based Annotation System analyses were performed to predict circRNA associations with cancer-related putative downstream miRNAs and target genes. Receiver operating characteristic curves and the area under the curve (AUC) values were acquired to assess the performance of validated circRNAs in predicting potential associations with PTC. In total, 158 dysregulated circRNAs were identified in PTC tumors relative to adjacent normal tissues. Notably, one downregulated circRNA (hsa_circ_IPCEF1) showed the preferable predictive power (AUC=0.8010, P<0.0001) and interactions with four cancer-related genes (CASR, CDC25B, NFκB1 and SHOC2). From these analyses, one PTC-related miRNA (hsa-miR-3619-5p) was identified as a potential target for hsa_circ_IPCEF1 sponging, indicating the hsa_circ_IPCEF1/hsa-miR-3619-5p axis in pathogenesis.