Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Germ cell tumour subtypes display differential expression of microRNA371a-3p

2018; Royal Society; Volume: 373; Issue: 1748 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rstb.2017.0338

1471-2970

Bárbara Vilela-Salgueiro, Daniela Barros‐Silva, João Lobo, Ana Laura Costa, Rita de Cássia Avellaneda Guimarães, Mariana Cantante, Paula Lopes, Isaac Braga, Jorge Oliveira, Rui Henrique, Cármen Jerónimo,

Genetic and Clinical Aspects of Sex Determination and Chromosomal Abnormalities

Testicular germ cell tumours (TGCTs) are a heterogeneous group of neoplasms, mostly affecting young men. Curability rates are high and adequate treatment relies on careful and accurate pathological and clinical assessment. Indeed, TGCTs' histopathological subtyping is critical for adequate therapeutic decision. Considering the limitation of currently available serum biomarkers, novel candidates have been proposed, most notably miR-371a-3p, which outperformed classical serum markers, but no detailed information concerning TGCT subtype was available. Thus, we carried out evaluation of miR-371a-3p expression levels among TGCT subtypes using a consecutive cohort of tissue samples. MiR-371a-3p discriminated TGCTs from control tissues with high sensitivity and specificity (AUC = 0.99). Furthermore, seminomas displayed higher miR-371a-3p expression levels compared to non-seminomatous TGCTs, which also showed significant differences among them. Nonetheless, prepubertal TGCTs depicted lower miR-371a-3p expression levels than postpubertal TGCTs. Globally, miR-371a-3p expression levels decreased in parallel with progressive cell differentiation. We concluded that miR-371a-3p is TGCTs-specific and it might be clinically useful for early detection and disease monitoring. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Frontiers in epigenetic chemical biology’.