Small extracellular vesicle-encapsulated miR-181b-5p, miR-222-3p and let-7a-5p: Next generation plasma biopsy-based diagnostic biomarkers for inflammatory breast cancer

PLoS One. 2021 Apr 26;16(4):e0250642. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250642. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare, but aggressive entity of breast carcinoma with rapid dermal lymphatic invasion in young females. It is either poorly or misdiagnosed as mastitis because of the absence of a distinct lump. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) circulating in liquid biopsies are a novel class of minimally invasive diagnostic alternative to invasive tissue biopsies. They modulate cancer progression via shuttling their encapsulated cargo including microRNAs (miRNAs) into recipient cells to either trigger signaling or induce malignant transformation of targeted cells. Plasma sEVs < 200 nm were isolated using a modified cost-effective polyethylene glycol (PEG)-based precipitation method and compared to standard methods, namely ultracentrifugation and a commercial kit, where the successful isolation was verified by different approaches. We evaluated the expression levels of selected sEV-derived miR-181b-5p, miR-222-3p and let-7a-5p using quantitative real PCR (qPCR). Relative to non-IBC, our qPCR data showed that sEV-derived miR-181b-5p and miR-222-3p were significantly upregulated, whereas let-7a-5p was downregulated in IBC patients. Interestingly, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves analysis revealed that diagnostic accuracy of let-7a-5p alone was the highest for IBC with an area under curve (AUC) value of 0.9188, and when combined with miR-222-3p the AUC was improved to 0.973. Further, 38 hub genes were identified using bioinformatics analysis. Together, circulating sEV-derived miR-181b-5p, miR-222-3p and let-7a-5p serve as promising non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers for IBC.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Area Under Curve
  • Biomarkers, Tumor / blood
  • Biomarkers, Tumor / genetics*
  • Extracellular Vesicles / genetics*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Inflammatory Breast Neoplasms / diagnosis*
  • Liquid Biopsy
  • MicroRNAs / blood*
  • MicroRNAs / metabolism
  • Middle Aged
  • Protein Interaction Maps / genetics
  • ROC Curve
  • Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Transcriptome

Substances

  • Biomarkers, Tumor
  • MIRN222 microRNA, human
  • MIrn181 microRNA, human
  • MicroRNAs
  • mirnlet7 microRNA, human

Grants and funding

This work was supported by General Scientific Research Department of Cairo University (SAI), Science and Technology Development Funds (STDF) Research Support & Technology Development Grant ID#12683 (to SAI), Capacity building Grant ID#2744 (to SAI), and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Grant – Short Term Grant ID# 91749472 (to NAE-S.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.