Establishing a miRNA panel for hepatocellular carcinoma screening through a multicenter study

Summary: Most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are often diagnosed at advanced stages, limiting the effectiveness of curative treatments. In a multicenter study involving 522 patients with HCC and liver cirrhosis, predominantly with hepatitis B virus infection, we evaluated plasma microR...

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Main Authors: Kelvin Ka Ki Ng, Yanjun Lu, Jia Qiu, Zihan Yang, Xiaoyu Zhou, Hui Xie, Zhihang Zhou, Mengsu Yang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-08-01
Series:iScience
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225012477
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Summary:Summary: Most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are often diagnosed at advanced stages, limiting the effectiveness of curative treatments. In a multicenter study involving 522 patients with HCC and liver cirrhosis, predominantly with hepatitis B virus infection, we evaluated plasma microRNAs (miRNAs) as potential liquid biopsy biomarkers for early HCC screening. Significant upregulation of 18 miRNAs in HCC patients was confirmed across three stages. We conducted a meta-analysis integrating our results with existing literature based on pooled effect size, successfully confirming the upregulation of 4 miRNAs in our findings. Employing an explainable machine learning approach, we established a 5-miRNA panel (miR-361-5p+ miR-130a-3p+ miR-27a-3p+ miR-30d-5p+ miR-193a-5p) with alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) for HCC screening. This combined panel demonstrated superior diagnostic performance compared to AFP alone (AUC: 0.924 vs. 0.794; p < 0.001) in distinguishing HCC patients in the testing and validation set, highlighting its potential as a promising minimally invasive screening method for HCC.
ISSN:2589-0042