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  • Clinical medicine

Published online: 29 October 2008 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2008.251

MicroRNAs: Cancer 'fingerprints'

Jasmine Farsarakis

Introduction

© (2008) istockphoto.com/Alessandro Contadini

Early diagnosis of cancer is imperative for a more positive patient outcome. This is easier said than done, however, as current diagnostic methods are either too invasive or not accurate enough. Chenyu Zhang and Junfeng Zhang at the University of Nanjing and co-workers¹ have found that the presence of small strands of RNA, or microRNAs (miRNAs), in a patient's blood sample can be biomarkers for the accurate diagnosis of several types of cancer and diabetes.

The presence of miRNAs in serum and plasma samples has not been previously identified. The researchers used a specially adapted assay to identify miRNAs in both serum and plasma, in a stable state that is surprisingly resistant to enzymatic cleavage and harsh conditions.

Using a very sensitive sequencing technology known as Solexa, the researchers subsequently profiled the expression of specific miRNAs present in healthy individuals and compared them with those of patients diagnosed with several different types of cancer, including non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer and lung cancer. They found that the miRNA clusters expressed in cancerous samples were very distinctive; the expression patterns were unique to each type of cancer, and all cancer-related miRNA clusters differed from the clusters observed in healthy patients.

Thus, the specific cancer-related miRNA expression patterns identified by the researchers can be used as a diagnostic 'fingerprint' for specific types of cancer, providing a more accurate and non-invasive option for the effective diagnosis of the early stages of cancer.

The authors of this work are from:
Jiangsu Diabetes Center, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China; Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin, China; Beijing Genomics Institute, Shenzhen, China; Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Department of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, Ruijin Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shanghai, China.

Reference

1. Chen, X. et al. Characterization of microRNAs in serum: A novel class of biomarkers for diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. Cell Res. 18, 997–1006 (2008). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |