Increased microRNA-30a levels in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid as a diagnostic biomarker for lung cancer

Wen-Jun Zhu; Bo-Jiang Chen; Ying-Ying Zhu; Ling Sun; Yu-Chen Zhang; Huan Liu; Feng-Ming Luo

doi:10.7717/peerj.11528

Increased microRNA-30a levels in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid as a diagnostic biomarker for lung cancer

PeerJ. 2021 Jun 9:9:e11528. doi: 10.7717/peerj.11528. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Wen-Jun Zhu^#^{1

2}, Bo-Jiang Chen^#¹, Ying-Ying Zhu¹, Ling Sun^{1

2}, Yu-Chen Zhang^{1

2}, Huan Liu³, Feng-Ming Luo^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
² Laboratory of Pulmonary Immunology and Inflammation, Frontiers Science Center for Disease-related Molecular Network, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
³ Department of General Medicine, University-Town Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: MicroRNA-30a (miRNA-30a) levels have been shown to increase in the plasma of lung cancer patients. Herein, we evaluated the miRNA-30a levels in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of lung cancer patients as a potential biomarker for lung cancer diagnosis.

Methods: BALF miRNA-30a expression of 174 subjects was quantified using quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and compared between lung cancer patients and control patients with benign lung diseases. Moreover, its diagnostic value was evaluated by performing receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.

Results: The relative BALF miRNA-30a expression was significantly higher in the lung cancer patients than in the controls (0.74 ± 0.55 versus 0.07 ± 0.48, respectively, p < 0.001) as well as in lung cancer patients with stage I-IIA disease than in those with stage IIB-IV disease (0.98 ± 0.64 versus 0.66 ± 0.54, respectively, p < 0.05). Additionally, miRNA-30a distinguished benign lung diseases from lung cancers, with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.822. ROC analysis also revealed an AUC of 0.875 for the Youden index-based optimal cut-off points for stage I-IIA adenocarcinoma. Thus, increased miRNA-30a levels in BALF may be a useful biomarker for non-small-cell lung cancer diagnosis.

Keywords: Biomarker; Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF); Early diagnosis; Lung cancer; Tumor marker; miRNA-30a.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China grant (NSFC No. 81770072) and the project of Science & Technology Department of Sichuan Province, China (no. 2016JY0043). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.