Whole blood microRNA expression may not be useful for screening non-small cell lung cancer

by Santosh K. Patnaik, Eric D. Kannisto, Reema Mallick, Anil Vachani, Sai Yendamuri

At least seven studies have suggested that microRNA levels in whole blood can be diagnostic for lung cancer. We conducted a large bi-institutional study to validate this. Qiagen^® PAXgene^™ Blood miRNA System was used to collect blood and extract RNA from it for 85 pathologic stage I-IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cases and 76 clinically-relevant controls who had a benign pulmonary mass, or a high risk of developing lung cancer because of a history of cigarette smoking or age >60 years. Cases and controls were similar for age, gender, race, and blood hemoglobin and leukocyte but not platelet levels (0.23 and 0.26 million/μl, respectively; t test P = 0.01). Exiqon^® MiRCURY^™ microarrays were used to quantify microRNAs in RNA isolates. Quantification was also performed using Taqman^™ microRNA reverse transcription (RT)-PCR assays for five microRNAs whose lung cancer-diagnostic potential had been suggested in seven published studies. Of the 1,941 human mature microRNAs detectable with the microarray platform, 598 (31%) were identified as expressed and reliably quantified among the study's subjects. However, none of the microRNAs was differentially expressed between cases and controls (P >0.05 at false discovery rate

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