Differential miRNA expression profiles in bladder urothelial carcinomas.

The urothelial carcinoma is the most common pathological type of bladder tumor. Creation of lists of miRNAs differentially expressed between this tumor type and normal tissue might help identify new diagnostic and prognostic markers. We therefore performed the present miRNA microarray analysis with 25 cases of bladder urothelial carcinomas and adjacent normal bladder tissue. The results showed a panel of 51 differentially expressed miRNAs with at least 2-fold differences in expression compared with the normal controls, including 20 up-regulated and 31 down-regulated examples. The expression levels of ten of the top dysregulated miRNAs, mir-1, mir-145, mir-143, mir-100, mir-200b, mir-708, mir-133a, mir-133b, mir-125b and mir-99 were experimentally verified using real-time RT-PCR analysis. These findings suggest that these miRNAs may be involved in bladder urothelial carcinoma pathogenesis and have potential as biomarkers.