Circulating Micrornas Predict Survival of Patients with Tumors of Glial Origin.

The World Health Organization has recently introduced molecular prognostic-diagnostic biomarkers in the classification of Central Nervous System (CNS) tumors. In order to characterize subclasses of tumors that cannot find a precise location in the current classification, and, or cannot be tested because of scant material, it is important to find new molecular biomarkers in tissue and, or biological fluid samples. In this study, we identified serum microRNAs that could serve as biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with tumors of glial origin. We retrospectively analyzed microRNA expression in the serum extracellular vesicles of patients with tumors of glial origin. Extracellular vesicles RNA was analyzed by Nanostring. qRT-PCR confirmed 6 overexpressed microRNAs: hsa-miR-4443, hsa-miR-422a, hsa-miR-494-3p, hsa-miR-502-5p, hsa-miR-520f-3p, and hsa-miR-549a. Hsa-miR-4443 was the only microRNA that showed significant differences in most comparisons. In situ hybridization (ISH), confirmed that our signature was mostly expressed in cancer cells.