Upregulated miR-483-5p expression as a prognostic biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the most common cause of cancer-associated mortality. Uncovering novel molecular biomarkers that can predict ESCC development will improve personalized therapy.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of the current study was to investigate the expression pattern of miR-483-5p and determine its prognostic value in ESCC.

METHODS: We first analyzed miRNA-seq data obtained from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort to evaluate the prognostic value of miR-483-5p in ESCC. Then quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) was carried out to compare the miR-483-5p levels in 80 pairs of ESCC tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The correlation between miR-483-5p levels and clinical features were determined.

RESULTS: For the TCGA cohort, ESCC patients with higher miR-483-5p had significantly shorter overall survival time. The examined ESCC cancer tissues exhibited a remarkable increment in miR-483-5p expression compared with the adjacent normal tissues. miR-483-5p was positively correlated with TNM stage, lymph nodes metastasis and T stage. In addition, upregulate miR-483-5p expression was also found to be significantly associated with poor survival of ESCC patients. Furthermore, miR-483-5p expression was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival and disease free survival in ESCC patients.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates that miR-483-5p might be a tumor promoter of ESCC, which provide a promising prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target.