Circulatory miR-628-5p is downregulated in prostate cancer patients

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a major health concern for men in the USA. Aberrant expression of microRNAs (miRNAs) has been associated with the pathogenesis of various cancers, including PCa. Circulatory forms of miRNAs have been detected in serum and hold promise as minimally invasive cancer biomarkers. This study aimed to identify potential circulatory miRNAs that can provide insights into new mechanisms for clinical diagnosis of PCa and can serve as potential biomarkers and/or therapeutic targets. Candidate serum miRNAs were detected by using PCR microarray in a learning set of six African American (AA) and six Caucasian American (CA) PCa patients. Discriminating performance of candidate miRNAs was validated by qRT-PCR in serum samples from 36 AA (24 PCa patients and 12 controls) and 36 CA (16 PCa patients and 20 controls). From the miRNA profiling experiments, three differentially expressed miRNAs (miR-25, miR-101, and miR-628-5p) were selected for future validation. In the validation set, there was an overall low expression of miR-25 (p < 0.01), miR-101 (p < 0.001), and miR-628-5p (p < 0.0001) in serum of PCa patients as compared with normal individuals. Subdivision on the basis of ethnicity showed that serum expression levels of miR-628-5p were significantly downregulated in both AA and CA PCa patients when compared with their respective controls. Our results demonstrate that the three miRNAs, particularly miR-628-5p, may be further developed as a biomarker, which can serve as novel noninvasive biomarker for PCa diagnosis and prognosis.