miR-29b expression is associated with disease-free survival in patients with ovarian serous carcinoma.
Flavin R., Smyth P., Barrett C., Russell S., Wen H., Wei J., Laios A., O'Toole S., Ring M., Denning K., Li J., Aherne S., Sammarae D., Aziz NA., Alhadi A., Finn SP., Loda M., B S., Sheils O., O'Leary JJ.
Micro-RNAs are a group of small noncoding RNAs approximately 22 nucleotides in length. Recent work has shown differential expression of mature micro-RNAs in human cancers. We characterized the alteration in expression of miR-29b in ovarian serous carcinoma. miR-29b expression was analyzed using quantitative stem-loop reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction on a set of 50 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded ovarian serous carcinoma samples. Protein expression of p53, estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, Ki-67, and insulinlike growth factor 1 was quantified in the corresponding tissue microarray. The expression profile of miR-29b was correlated with clinicopathological and patient survival data. We provide definitive evidence that miR-29b is down-regulated in a significant proportion of ovarian serous carcinomas and is associated with specific clinicopathological features, most notably high miR-29b expression being associated with reduced disease-free survival.