Plasma miR-940 may serve as a novel biomarker for gastric cancer.

It was reported that circulating microRNAs could be applied as non-invasive biomarkers for cancer monitoring. The purpose of this study was to identify plasma miRNA that may serve as a novel biomarker for gastric cancer and to evaluate its clinical application. MicroRNA profiles were generated from plasma samples of 5 patients with gastric cancer (GC) versus 5 healthy controls (HC). MicroRNA-940 (miR-940) was one of the most downregulated miRNAs with fold change of 0.164. It was revealed that the expression of miR-940 was downregulated in both the initial set (N = 30, P < 0.0001) and the validation set (N = 80, P < 0.0001) of plasma samples of patients with gastric cancer. The sensitivity was obviously higher than the current biomarkers CEA and CA19-9 (81.25 % vs. 22.54 % and 15.71 %). MiR-940 was also significantly downregulated in gastric cancer tissue samples (N = 34, P = 0.0015), as well as in cancer cell lines (N = 7). Importantly, miR-940 was significantly highly expressed in stomach tissue samples than in other types of tissue samples including the liver, breast, thyroid, and lung. Moreover, there was a trend of lower expression of miR-940 from early to advanced stage of gastric cancer. Target prediction suggested that miR-940 regulated cell signaling including NF-κB and Wnt/β-catenin, as well as pathways of cell communication and adhesion. These pathways play critical roles in gastric cancer initiation and progression. It is the first report that miR-940 may mainly express in the stomach. Downregulation of plasma miR-940 may serve as a novel biomarker for detection of gastric cancer.