Methylation of Tumor Suppressive miRNAs in Plasma from Patients With Pancreaticobiliary Diseases

Koushiro Ohtsubo; Kunio Miyake; Sachiko Arai; Koji Fukuda; Chiaki Suzuki; Hiroshi Kotani; Azusa Tanimoto; Akihiro Nishiyama; Shigeki Nanjo; Kaname Yamashita; Shinji Takeuchi; Seiji Yano

doi:10.21873/cdp.10120

Methylation of Tumor Suppressive miRNAs in Plasma from Patients With Pancreaticobiliary Diseases

Cancer Diagn Progn. 2022 May 3;2(3):378-383. doi: 10.21873/cdp.10120. eCollection 2022 May-Jun.

Affiliations

¹ Division of Medical Oncology, Cancer Research Institute, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.
² Department of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Yamanashi, Chuo, Japan.

Abstract

Background/aim: We previously reported the usefulness of aberrant methylation of tumor suppressive miRNAs in bile to discriminate pancreaticobiliary cancers (PBCs) from benign pancreaticobiliary diseases (BD). Here we performed a methylation analysis of plasma miRNAs to identify miRNAs specific for PBCs.

Patients and methods: Plasma was collected from 80 patients with pancreatic cancer (PC); 18 with biliary tract cancer (BTC) and 28 with BD. Sequences encoding 3 tumor suppressive miRNAs (miR-200a, -200b, and -1247) were PCR amplified and sequenced, and their methylation rates were determined.

Results: The methylation rate of miR-1247 was significantly higher in patients with BTC than in those with BD, and tended to be higher in patients with PC than in those with BD. Furthermore, it was significantly higher in three patients with stages I/II BTC than in those with BD.

Conclusion: Methylation of miR-1247 in plasma may be useful to distinguish BTC from BD.

Keywords: biliary tract cancer; methylation; miRNA; pancreatic cancer; plasma.