Abstract 2933
Background
The benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in II and III stage patients with colon cancer (CC) is determined in large-scale trials. Despite the surprisingly large number of Nx cases (less than 12 lymph nodes examined), the potential benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy is not known and there are only a few biomarkers that could predict recurrence of the disease. Recent evidence suggests that microRNAs are important cancer markers.
Methods
CC patients (n = 18) with Nx lymph node status, who have undergone radical surgery and have completed 5-FU based adjuvant chemotherapy were included. Serum after last cycle of adjuvant chemotherapy was obtained and patients were followed-up regularly for 1 year of follow-up. Real-time reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to measure the expression levels of miRNAs (miR-17, miR-21, miR-29a and miR-92), in the patients' samples and in 7 healthy individuals, as a control group.
Results
Seven patients from the tested group experienced recurrence after 1 year of follow-up. Within the Nx patients all miRNAs except miR-29a had significant differences in expression levels between the recurred patients vs non recurred patients groups. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) used to evaluate the predictive performance of the miR-17, miR-21, miR-92 for Nx patients were 0.844, 0.948, and 0.935, respectively (p
Conclusions
This study suggests that the expression levels of the tested serum miR-21, miR-17 and miR-92 in Nx patients with CC who underwent radical surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy may have diagnostic value for differentiating between recurred and non-recurred patients.
Clinical trial identification
Legal entity responsible for the study
Ivan Donev
Funding
Medical University Varna
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.