Evaluation of CircHIPK3 biomarker potential in breast cancer

Abstract

Background

Nowadays, the investigation of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in various cancers is of great interest. In this research, we evaluated circHIPK3 biomarker potential in breast cancer (BC).

Methods

The studied samples were 100 cancer and adjacent normal tissues, plasma from 95 cancer patients, 42 patients with fibroadenomatosis, and 93 healthy donors. Illumina high-throughput Hi Seq 2000 sequencing performed expression profiling on 4 pairs of cancerous and normal breast tissues. For expression confirmation, Quantitative real-time fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to detect the expression level of circHIPK3. CircHIPK3 diagnostic efficacy was evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC).

Results

Based on high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics results circHIPK3 had the highest expression in cancer tissues (P = 0.00034). Real-time results showed expression upregulation of circHIPK3 in BC tissues and plasma in comparison to healthy controls (P < 0.0001). For diagnostic potential, the area under the curve (AUC) result was 0.8087 (95 % CI: 0.7309 to 0.8866, P < 0.0001). Also, our results showed high specificity and sensitivity of circHIPK3 when evaluated alongside the CA-15-3 and CEA. Pathologic criteria evaluation showed that upregulation of circHIPK3 correlates with tumor size.

Conclusions

CircHIPK3 is significantly upregulated in BC tissues and plasma compared to healthy controls, demonstrating high diagnostic potential with an AUC of 0.8087. The expression of circHIPK3 correlates with tumor size, indicating its relevance in the pathologic assessment of BC.