Evaluation of altered expression of and as an early diagnostic approach in gastric cancer.

Background: The role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in cellular processes such as growth, apoptosis, differentiation and proliferation verifies the importance of miRNAs in carcinogenesis. Moreover, levels of miRNAs are dysregulated in cancer cells, so they could be used as novel classes of biomarkers for diagnosing cancer. The oncogenic role of and its increased expression have been demonstrated in some cancers. In contrast, there is no consensus for expression rate in different cancers. Therefore, this study was done to investigate the role of and in gastric cancer (GC).

Methods: The current study was performed on 31 GC tissues as case, and 31 healthy adjacent tissues as a control group. Quantitative reverse transcriptase (q-RT) PCR was used for studying the expression rate of both and .

Results: The expression rate of both miRNAs in cancerous tissues was significantly higher than healthy adjacent tissues (≈10 folds) (P<0.05).

Conclusions: The results showed that the expression rate of both markers was significantly increased in cancerous tissues. Therefore, they can be suggested as potential biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis as well as targets for therapy.