Role of Mir-33a, Mir-203b, Mir-361-3p, Mir-424 in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

BACKGROUND/AIM Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most aggressive cancer. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), are small noncoding regulatory RNAs, that function post-transcriptionally. MiRNA deregulation was observed in the development and progression of HCC. In this study we aimed to investigate the expression levels of four miRNA (mir-33a, mir-203b, mir361-3p and mir-424) in HCC patients in comparison to healthy individuals. MATERIALS AND METHODS Venous blood samples were collected from both HCC patients and healthy individuals. In order to determine relative expression levels of mir-33a, mir-203b, mir361-3p and hsa-mir-424 in HCC patients using probe-based Quantitative Real Time PCR (qRT-PCR) is performed. The cycle threshold (Ct) results were analyzed according to the 2???Ct method and statistical analyses was performed by IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 15. RESULTS qRT-PCR analysis revealed that the expression level of mir-33a (fold change: 7.3 and p<0,001), mir-203b (fold change: 4.6 and p<0,001), mir361-3p (fold change: 5.1 and p<0,001) were down regulated compared to healthy individuals and mir-424 did not show any significant change between the HCC patients and controls. CONCLUSION Our results indicated that mir-33a, mir-203b and mir-361-3p, may significantly contribute to tumor pathogenesis in HCC and would have potential to be used as a non-invasive biomarker for cancer therapy.