Background: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have recently emerged as a new class of RNAs, highly enriched in the human tissues and very stable within cells, exosomes and body fluids. In this study, we aimed to screen the plasma cell-free derived circRNAs in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) and investigate whether these circRNAs could predicted LSCC as potential biomarkers.
Methods: The circRNA microarray was employed with three samples in each group to screen the dysregulated circRNAs isolated from plasma samples. The top 20 circRNAs were first selected as candidates with the upregulated level in the plasma of LSCC.
Results: Further validation found that only circ_0019201, circ_0011773 and circ_0122790 was consistent with training set. The ROC curve also revealed a high diagnostic ability an area under ROC curve value (AUC) for single circRNA and combined. The AUC for circ_0019201, circ_0011773 and circ_0122790 and the combined was 0.933, 0.908, 0.965 and 0.990 in training set. For the validation set, the AUC was 0.766, 0.864, 0.908 and 0.951. The three circRNAs were further investigated with stable expression in human plasma samples.
Conclusions: The plasma derived circ_0019201, circ_0011773 and circ_0122790 might be the potential biomarker for predicting the LSCC.
Keywords: circRNA; laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma; plasma; receiver operating characteristic curve; risk score function.