Downregulations of miR-449a and miR-145-5p Act as Prognostic Biomarkers for Endometrial Cancer

Abstract

This investigation aimed to explore the underlying prognosis-associated microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers in endometrial cancer. <i>Homo sapiens</i> miRNA data set GSE35794 and miRNA data in TGGA database were downloaded and applied to screen the differentially expressed miRNAs (DE-miRNAs) using unpaired <i>t</i>-test in limma package in R. Basing on Venn analysis, the overlapped DE-miRNAs were screened and their potential targets were predicted according to miRWalk followed by target functional enrichment analyses and protein-protein interaction network visualized using Cytoscape. Finally, according to the information provided by the The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, correlations between miRNAs or targets and patient prognosis were analyzed by survival package in R. A total of 24 overlapped DE-miRNAs were identified between endometrioid endometrial cancer samples and normal samples. Then, the miRNA-target regulatory network was constructed, including 11 upregulated miRNAs (e.g., miR-200a, miR-200b, and miR-200c) and five downregulated miRNAs (e.g., miR-449a, miR-145-5p, and miR-145-3p). Lymphocyte enhancer factor-1 (<i>LEF1</i>) was predicted to be a target of miR-449a and <i>SOX11</i> was a target of miR-145-5p. Functional enrichment analyses of these targets were significantly related to the biological process of "negative regulation of transcription from RNA polymerase II promoter" and "positive regulation of transcription from RNA polymerase II promoter" (e.g., <i>NOTCH1</i>, <i>LEF1</i>, and <i>SOX11</i>). In addition, survival analysis showed that miR-449a, miR-145-5p, and <i>LEF1</i> were approximately correlated with the overall survival prognosis of endometrial cancer patients. Downregulations of miR-449a and miR-145-5p might be involved in the pathogenesis of endometrial cancer and could act as prognostic biomarkers for endometrial cancer patients.