Background: This study aims to evaluate whether miR-22 could be used as a potential biomarker to screen breast cancer patients from healthy controls. This has never been explored.
Methods: Real time PCR analysis was carried out to explore the expression of serum miR-22 in breast cancer patients. Chi-square test was used for counting data. Log rank test was used for comparing survival curves. CoX regression model was used for univariate and multivariate prognosis analysis. In addition, we also evaluated the role of miR-22 on the migration capacity of MCF-7 cells using a wound healing assay.
Results: We found that low expression of miR-22 was significantly associated with late TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, local recurrence, and distant metastasis. Meanwhile, low expression of miR-22 was significantly associated with short survival and poor prognosis in all patients and lymph node subgroups. Analysis of CoX univariate and multivariate models demonstrated that miR-22 is an independent prognostic marker of breast cancer. In ad-dition, overexpression of miR-22 significantly decreased the migration of MCF-7 cells, validating the tumor suppressor role of miR-22 in breast cancer cells.
Conclusions: In summary, low miR-22 expression may be a potential biomarker to screen breast cancer patients from healthy control.