Six-MicroRNA Prognostic Signature in Patients With Locally Advanced Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been evaluated as biomarkers in cancers. Therefore, we aimed to identify a prognostic miRNA signature from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and validate it in the Ramathibodi (RA) locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (LA-HNSCC) cohort. The correlation between candidate miRNAs and the survival of patients with LA-HNSCC in TCGA database was analyzed. A prognostic miRNA signature model was generated that classified patients into high-risk and low-risk groups. This candidate miRNA signature was further validated in the independent RA cohort using droplet-digital polymerase chain reaction. In TCGA database, we compared the expression of 277 miRNAs between 519 head and neck squamous cell carcinoma tissues and 44 normal tissues. The expression of <i>hsa-miR-10b</i>, <i>hsa-miR-148b</i>, <i>hsa-miR-99a,</i> <i>hsa-miR-127</i>, <i>hsa-miR-370</i>, and <i>hsa-miR-500a</i> was independently associated with overall survival (OS). Thus, we established the miRNA signature risk score from these six miRNAs and categorized patients into low-risk and high-risk groups. The median OS of TCGA patients was significantly shorter in the low-risk group than in the high-risk group (<i>P</i> < .001). The six-miRNA signature was further validated in the RA cohort (N = 87). The median OS of the low-risk group was significantly shorter compared with the high-risk group (<i>P</i> = .03). In multivariate analysis, the six-miRNA signature was an independent prognostic factor for OS in the RA cohort (HR, 1.958; 95% CI, 1.006 to 3.812; <i>P</i> = .048). We identified a prognostic six-miRNA signature for patients with LA-HNSCC from TCGA cohort and validated it in our independent cohort. However, larger studies are warranted to confirm these results.