Performance of Salivary Extracellular RNA Biomarker Panels for Gastric Cancer Differs between Distinct Populations

Karolina Elżbieta Kaczor-Urbanowicz; Mustafa Saad; Tristan R Grogan; Feng Li; You Jeong Heo; David Elashoff; Robert S Bresalier; David T W Wong; Yong Kim

doi:10.3390/cancers14153632

Performance of Salivary Extracellular RNA Biomarker Panels for Gastric Cancer Differs between Distinct Populations

Cancers (Basel). 2022 Jul 26;14(15):3632. doi: 10.3390/cancers14153632.

Authors

Karolina Elżbieta Kaczor-Urbanowicz^{1

2

3

4}, Mustafa Saad¹, Tristan R Grogan⁵, Feng Li^{1

4}, You Jeong Heo¹, David Elashoff⁵, Robert S Bresalier⁶, David T W Wong^{1

4

7}, Yong Kim^{1

4

6}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Oral and Head/Neck Oncology Research, School of Dentistry, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
² UCLA Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
³ UCLA Section of Orthodontics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁴ Section of Biosystems and Function, School of Dentistry, University of California at Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁵ Department of Medicine Statistics Core, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA.
⁶ Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Division of Internal Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
⁷ UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA.

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) has the fifth highest incidence among cancers and is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death GC has predominantly a higher number of cases in certain ethnic groups such as the Korean population. GC found at an early stage is more treatable and has a higher survival rate as compared with GC found at a late stage. However, a diagnosis of GC is often delayed due to the lack of early symptoms and available screening programs in United States. Extracellular RNA (exRNA) is an emerging paradigm; exRNAs have the potential to serve as biomarkers in panels aimed at early detection of cancer. We previously reported the successful use of a panel of salivary exRNA for detecting GC in a high-prevalence Korean cohort, and that genetic changes reflected cancer-associated salivary exRNA changes. The current study is a case-control study of salivary exRNA biomarkers for detecting GC in an ethnically distinct U.S. cohort. A model constructed for the U.S. cohort combined demographic characteristics and salivary miRNA and mRNA biomarkers for GC and yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of 0.78. However, the constituents of this model differed from that constructed for the Korean cohort, thus, emphasizing the importance of population-specific biomarker development and validation.

Keywords: biomarkers; exRNA; gastric cancer; saliva; validation.

Abstract

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