Establishing a miRNA panel for hepatocellular carcinoma screening through a multicenter study.

Journal: iScience
Published Date: Jun 23, 2025

Abstract

Most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are often diagnosed at advanced stages, limiting the effectiveness of curative treatments. In a multicenter study involving 522 patients with HCC and liver cirrhosis, predominantly with hepatitis B virus infection, we evaluated plasma microRNAs (miRNAs) as potential liquid biopsy biomarkers for early HCC screening. Significant upregulation of 18 miRNAs in HCC patients was confirmed across three stages. We conducted a meta-analysis integrating our results with existing literature based on pooled effect size, successfully confirming the upregulation of 4 miRNAs in our findings. Employing an explainable machine learning approach, we established a 5-miRNA panel (miR-361-5p+ miR-130a-3p+ miR-27a-3p+ miR-30d-5p+ miR-193a-5p) with alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) for HCC screening. This combined panel demonstrated superior diagnostic performance compared to AFP alone (AUC: 0.924 vs. 0.794; < 0.001) in distinguishing HCC patients in the testing and validation set, highlighting its potential as a promising minimally invasive screening method for HCC.

Authors

  • Kelvin Ka Ki Ng
    Department of Precision Diagnostic and Therapeutic Technology, City University of Hong Kong Futian Research Institute, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
  • Yanjun Lu
    Department of Laboratory Medicine, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
  • Jia Qiu
    Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, 510080, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.
  • Zihan Yang
    Institute of Modern Optics, Nankai University, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Micro-Scale Optical Information Science and Technology, Tianjin, 300350, China.
  • Xiaoyu Zhou
    State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China.
  • Hui Xie
    Department of Breast Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University & Jiangsu Province Hospital, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
  • Zhihang Zhou
    Department of Pediatric Surgery, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Wenhua West Road 107#, Jinan, 250012, China.
  • Mengsu Yang
    Department of Precision Diagnostic and Therapeutic Technology, City University of Hong Kong Futian Research Institute, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.

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