Comparative Analysis of Differentially Expressed miRNAs and their Downstream mRNAs in Ovarian Cancer and its Associated

Objective—There is an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer (OC) in patients with endometriosis. Hence, development of new biomarkers may provide a positive clinical outcome for early detection. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that play an important role in biological and pathological process and are currently used as diagnostic and prognostic markers in various cancers. In the current study, we assessed the differential expression of miRNAs from 19 paired ovarian cancer and its associated endometriosis tissue samples. In addition we also analyzed the downstream targets of those miRNAs. Methods—Nineteen paired cases of ovarian cancer and endometriosis foci were identified by a gynecologic pathologist and macro-dissected. The total RNAs were extracted and subjected to comprehensive miRNA profiling from the pooled samples of these two different entities using microarray analysis. Later, the abnormal expressions of few selected miRNAs were validated in individual cases by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Ingenuity pathway analysis revealed target mRNAs which were validated by qRT-PCR. Results—The miRNA profiling identified deregulation of greater than 1156 miRNAs in OC, o