hanieh sadeghi - Department of Genetics, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
Bahareh shayestepour - Department of Genetics, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
arian kamal - Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, University Hospital Saarbrücken, Germany
andreas keller - Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, University Hospital Saarbrücken, Germany

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common type of cancer in women which leads to more than 500,000 deaths, annually. This type of cancer is a heterogeneous disease with diverse traits and sub-types reflected by various clinical outcomes. Therefore, identification of biomarkers that can accurately detect BC is a crucial step for early diagnosis of BC and choosing the optimal treatment for it. Circulating microRNAs have presented great potential as promising tools for BC detection. In this regard, we previously discovered a novel panel of circulating microRNAs based on the expression profiling analysis of 6017 patients with 14 cancer types including BC. Data from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) database crossed with three large blood-based miRNome datasets from 5351 patients, resulted in identification of a list of microRNAs. Six out of nine microRNAs were subsequently validated in whole blood using qRT-PCR in a pilot study on 70 BC patients and a control group. The expression level of candidate microRNAs was higher in whole blood samples collected from patients with BC compared to controls. Notably, our panel successfully differentiated fibrocystic types from healthy individuals in a pilot study. These results demonstrated the potential of this promising combination of microRNAs for detection of BC at its earlier stages in clinical settings.

Breast Cancer, Early Detection, Circulating miRNA, Liquid Biopsy