MicroRNA-21 Identified as Predictor of Cancer Outcome: A Meta-Analysis

<div><p>Background</p><p>Growing evidence from recent studies has revealed the association of microRNA-21 (mir-21) with outcomes in multiple cancers, but inconsistent findings have been reported, which rationalized a summary and analysis of available data to investigate the prognostic role of mir-21.</p><p>Materials and Methods</p><p>Eligible studies were identified through several search strategies and assessed for quality. Data was extracted from studies in terms of baseline characteristics and key statistics such as hazard ratio (HR), 95% confidence interval (CI) and <i>P</i> value, which were utilized to calculate pooled effect size.</p><p>Results</p><p>25 studies were included in the meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic role of mir-21 in malignant tumors. Elevated mir-21 level was demonstrated to moderately predict poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.903, 95% CI: 1.713–2.113, <i>P</i> = 0.000) and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 1.574, 95% CI: 1.139–2.175, <i>P</i> = 0.006) by the fixed and random effect model respectively. Importantly, subgroup analysis disclosed significant association between increased mir-21 level in cancerous tissue and worse survival status. Furthermore, over-expression of mir-21 was an independent prognostic factor for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and pancreatic cancer patients, with the pooled HR being 2.153 (95% CI: 1.693–2.739, <i>P</i> = 0.000) and 1.976 (95% CI: 1.639–2.384, <i>P</i> = 0.000).</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Over-expression of mir-21, especially in cancerous tissue, was effectively predictive of worse prognosis in various carcinomas. Non-invasive circulating mir-21, however, exhibited modest ability to discriminate outcomes. Major concerns about mir-21 assay standardization and selection of specimen need to be fully addressed before its practical implementation in management of cancer.</p></div

Flow chart of literature review and study selection process.

<p>Flow chart of literature review and study selection process.</p

Forest plots of the analyses about mir-21 and overall survival (OS) (A) and disease-free survival (DFS) (B).

<p>Fixed (A) and random (B) effect model was used as the pooling method respectively. Studies are stratified based on the type of specimen: 1 for cancerous tissue and 2 for circulating mir-21. * Analysis about mir-21 and DFS after the omission of the study by Jiang et al.</p

Relapse-free survival (A), overall survival (B) and cancer-specific survival (C) for patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy with (blue) or without (green) pretreatment anemia.

<p>Unadjusted comparison of estimates was made by log-rank test.</p

Publication bias of the included studies.

<p>Funnel plots provided graphic estimate of bias for overall studies (A), OS studies (B) and DFS studies (C) respectively. Main statistics of Egger’s test are summarized (D).</p

Disease-specific survival (DSS) rates in each treatment group stratified by LNR categories.

<p><i>Abbreviations</i>: BCS = breast-conserving surgery; MT = mastectomy; RT = radiotherapy.</p><p>Disease-specific survival (DSS) rates in each treatment group stratified by LNR categories.</p

a-d. Kaplan-Meier DSS estimates of breast cancer patients with T1-T2 tumor and 1–2 nodes treated with BCS+RT, BCS, MT, or MT+RT: (a) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving BCS+RT; (b) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving BCS alone; (c) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving MT+RT; (d) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving MT alone.

<p>a-d. Kaplan-Meier DSS estimates of breast cancer patients with T1-T2 tumor and 1–2 nodes treated with BCS+RT, BCS, MT, or MT+RT: (a) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving BCS+RT; (b) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving BCS alone; (c) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving MT+RT; (d) Disease-specific survival according to LNR in patients receiving MT alone.</p

Baseline Characteristics.

<p><i>Abbreviations</i>: BCS = breast-conserving surgery; MT = mastectomy; RT = radiotherapy.</p><p>* Grade IV stands for undifferentiated, anaplastic, or not differentiated in the SEER coding system.</p><p>Baseline Characteristics.</p

Enhanced sensitivity of heterocore structure surface plasmon resonance sensors based on local microstructures

A method to improve the refractive index (RI) and temperature sensitivities of optical fiber based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It is realized by using a precision femtosecond laser system to manufacture microstructures on a heterocore optical fiber structure (multimode single-mode multimode fiber, MSM). The microstructured MSM structure fiber-optic sensors were coated with 60-nm gold (Au) film to test and verify RI sensing, obtaining an enhancement of the maximum sensitivity range from 2845.18 to 3313.15 nm/RIU. The fabricated sensors were additionally coated with a layer of polydimethylsiloxane, which has a high negative thermos-optic coefficient, to conduct a series of temperature sensing experiments. Experimental results showed that the maximum sensitivity increased from 1.1998 to 1.5646 nm/degrees C. Compared with nonmicrostructured sensors, the RI and temperature sensitivity of the proposed sensor has increased 16.4% and 30.2%, respectively. The simply fabricated, low-cost, and high-sensitivity SPR sensor has promising applications in many areas, especially in the biochemical field. (C) 2018 society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Novel optical fiber SPR temperature sensor based on MMF-PCF-MMF structure and gold PDMS film

In this paper, a novel optical fiber temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is presented. The sensor consists of multimode fiber-photonic crystal fiber-multimode fiber (MMF-PCF-MMF) structure coated with gold film, whose refractive index (RI) sensitivity was found to range from 1060.78 nm/RIU to 4613.73 nm/RIU in the RI range of 1.3330-1.3904. Through simulation and experimental results, the RI sensitivity of the MMF-PCF-MMF structure is found to be higher than that of multimode fiber-single mode fiber-multimode fiber (MMF-SMF-MMF) structure. The sensing area was coated with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) that has a high thermal coefficient, obtaining a high temperature sensitivity of −1.551 nm/°C in the temperature range of 35-100 °C, which means it has a broad application prospect in medical, environmental monitoring and manufacturing industry