MicroRNA expression profiles of circulating microvesicles in hepatocellular carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Microvesicles (MVs) packaged with microribonucleic acids (miRNAs) have been shown to be released mainly from tumor cells. However, little information is known for miRNAs from MVs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Hence, we explored the MVs' miRNAs expression profiles in HCC.

METHODS: MVs were collected from peripheral blood of HCC, chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and normal controls. miRNA from MVs were labeled and analyzed by Agilent miRNA microarry. Bioinformatics tools were used to analyze function of the differentially expressed MVs' miRNAs.

RESULTS: A total of 242 aberrantly expressed miRNAs were identified in HCC-MVs compared with CHB-MVs and the control. Among them, 115 miRNAs were over-expressed with up to 31 fold difference (miR-671-5p) and 127 were down-expressed with up to 0.041 fold difference (miR-432) in HCC. By software miRror2.0, nucleolar protein 3 (NOL3) was found to be the core player among 300 target genes of top ten up-regulated miRNAs and serine/ arginine repetitive matrix 1(SRRM1) was central among the 219 targets of the top ten down-regulated miRNAs. We also analyzed GO categories for these predicted genes : cellular component, biological processes, and molecular function. The deregulation of MVs' miRNAs and their target genes were closely involved in the pathways of HCC.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study firstly demonstrated that miRNAs were differentially expressed in HCC-MVs compared with CHB and normal controls. Aberrant HCC-MVs miRNAs may play important roles in the development of HCC.