Evaluation of serum tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD as a potential biomarker for the clinical diagnosis of gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the diseases that endanger human health with high morbidity and mortality. The positive rates of traditional biomarkers in the diagnosis of GC are low, so it is necessary to find biomarkers with high sensitivity to increase the detection rate. tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs) are novel small non-coding RNAs with specific biological functions and aberrant expression in cancer. In this study, we focused on the potential of tRNA-derived small RNAs as GC biomarkers. METHODS: The differentially expressed tsRNAs in three pairs of GC tissues were screened with high-throughput sequencing and verified using the TCGA database and Quantitative real-time PCR. The methodological evaluation of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD was verified by agarose gel electrophoresis, RIN evaluation, and Sanger sequencing. The Chi-square test was used to evaluate the relationship between the tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD expression and clinicopathological parameters. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to evaluate the effect of the tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD expression on survival. Additionally, the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD in GC. RESULTS: Differential expression of serum tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD could distinguish GC patients from gastritis patients and healthy donors. Chi-square test showed that high expression of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD was significantly associated with T stage, lymph node metastasis, TNM stage, and nerve/vascular invasion. Kaplan–Meier curve showed that patients with high expression of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD had a lower survival rate than patients with low expression of this biomarker. ROC analysis showed that, compared with conventional biomarkers, the efficacy of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD was higher, which was improved by the combination of biomarkers, and even in the early stages. Finally, we preliminarily predicted the downstream of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD in GC cells. CONCLUSIONS: The expression of tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD in GC serum can identify GC patients, and it has higher efficacy than conventional biomarkers even in the early stages. Furthermore, tRF-23-Q99P9P9NDD can monitor the postoperative conditions of GC patients. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s10020-022-00491-8.