Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 21, 2017; 23(47): 8345-8354
Published online Dec 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i47.8345
Circular RNA circ-LDLRAD3 as a biomarker in diagnosis of pancreatic cancer
Fan Yang, Dong-Yan Liu, Jin-Tao Guo, Nan Ge, Ping Zhu, Xiang Liu, Sheng Wang, Guo-Xin Wang, Si-Yu Sun
Fan Yang, Jin-Tao Guo, Nan Ge, Ping Zhu, Xiang Liu, Sheng Wang, Guo-Xin Wang, Si-Yu Sun, Endoscopy Center, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province, China
Dong-Yan Liu, Medical Research Center, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Benxi 117000, Liaoning Province, China
Author contributions: Yang F and Sun SY were involved in the study conception and design; Yang F drafted the article and analyzed and interpreted the data; Guo JT and Ge N performed critical revision of the article for important intellectual content and collected the data; Liu X performed statistical analysis; Zhu P and Wang S conducted the evaluation of TNM stage of pancreatic cancer; all authors performed the final approval of the article.
Supported by Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province, No. 20170541024; and the Shengjing Free Researcher Project Foundation, No. 200812.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University (No. 2016PS277K).
Informed consent statement: All cancer specimen and blood samples from the patients and healthy volunteers were taken after informed written consent and ethical permission were obtained prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available for this study. All data are included in the paper itself.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Si-Yu Sun, MD, PhD, Chief, Professor, Endoscopy Center, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, No. 36, Sanhao Street, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province, China. sun-siyu@163.com
Telephone: +86-24-96615-26111 Fax: +86-24-23892617
Received: November 3, 2017
Peer-review started: November 4, 2017
First decision: November 14, 2017
Revised: November 17, 2017
Accepted: November 27, 2017
Article in press: November 27, 2017
Published online: December 21, 2017
Abstract
AIM

To analyze the diagnostic value of a circular RNA (circRNA), circ-LDLRAD3, in pancreatic cancer.

METHODS

Expression levels of circ-LDLRAD3 were tested in both cells and clinical samples; the latter included 30 paired pancreatic cancer tissues and adjacent non-tumorous tissues, 31 plasma samples from patients with pancreatic cancer, and 31 plasma samples from healthy volunteers. Real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was performed to measure expression levels of circ-LDLRAD3 in cells and clinical samples; then, the relationship between clinicopathological factors of patient samples and expression of circ-LDLRAD3 in pancreatic cancer was analyzed. The diagnostic value of circ-LDLRAD3 was verified by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.

RESULTS

Circ-LDLRAD3 was up-regulated in pancreatic cancer cell lines (P < 0.01), pancreatic cancer tissues (P < 0.01), and plasma samples from patients with pancreatic cancer (P < 0.01). High expression of circ-LDLRAD3 was significantly associated with venous invasion, lymphatic invasion, and metastasis. The area under the ROC curve of circ-LDLRAD3 alone or combination with CA19-9 was 0.67 and 0.87, respectively, with a sensitivity and specificity of 0.5738 (alone) and 0.7049 (alone), and 0.8033 (combination) and 0.9355 (combination), respectively.

CONCLUSION

These data suggest that circ-LDLRAD3 may be a biomarker in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Keywords: Circular RNA, Pancreatic cancer, Biomarker

Core tip: Circular RNAs (circRNAs), a novel class of stable endogenous RNAs, play important roles in the occurrence and progression of cancer; however, little is known about their diagnostic value in pancreatic cancer. Our study focused on a novel circRNA, circ-LDLRAD3. Expression levels of circ-LDLRAD3 were tested in both cells and clinical samples, including tissue samples and plasma samples. Then, the relationship between clinicopathological factors of patient samples and expression of circ-LDLRAD3 in pancreatic cancer was analyzed. The diagnostic value of circ-LDLRAD3 was verified by ROC curve analysis. Our study suggests that circ-LDLRAD3 may be a new biomarker in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.