Genome-wide microRNA profiles identify miR-378 as a serum biomarker for early detection of gastric cancer

Recent studies demonstrated that in several human malignancies aberrant expression profiles of circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) anticipate great cancer diagnostic potential. Here we showed that serum miR-378 could serve as a novel noninvasive biomarker in gastric cancer (GC) detection. Genome-wide miRNA expression profiles followed with Real-Time quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) assays revealed that miR-187*, miR-371-5p and miR-378 were significantly elevated in GC patients. Further validation indicated that miR-378 alone could yields a ROC curve area of 0.861 with 87.5% sensitivity and 70.73% specificity in discriminating GC patients from healthy controls. Collectively, these data support our contention that serum miR-378 has strong potential as a novel noninvasive biomarker in gastric cancer detection.