Blood-based miRNA signature analysis may be an effective noninvasive screening tool for identifying lung cancer early, a new study finds.
Lung cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer, can be challenging to diagnose due to a current lack of minimally invasive screening procedures, leading to late identification and poor prognosis. Past studies on miRNA biomarkers in blood have been conducted, but few have been validated for clinical application.
A study published in Oncotarget aimed to ascertain whether miRNAs could be used as a tool to screen patients at risk for lung cancer and to differentiate lung cancer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Researchers analyzed the blood-based signatures of 120 participants: those with the most common form of lung cancer, those with COPD, and healthy individuals who served as controls.
Using just five miRNA biomarkers extracted from the blood samples, researchers were able to differentiate between lung cancer and healthy controls with 94.5% accuracy. Accuracy of the five-biomarker signature was slightly lower for differentiating between COPD and lung cancer (78.8%), but accuracy was improved when the number of biomarkers included in the signature was increased to 10 (83.9%) or to 50 (87.6%).
The researchers concluded that the results validate the use of blood-based miRNA signatures in identifying and distinguishing lung cancer in clinical settings. Although the study was small in scale, the team plans to test the validity of their lung cancer biomarkers with larger patient cohorts.
