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. 2020 Feb 3;12(2):341. doi: 10.3390/cancers12020341

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Study pipeline. In this study, a variety of public datasets were utilized to predict novel candidate miRNA biomarkers for colorectal cancer (CRC) early diagnosis via systemic bioinformatics analysis. RNA-seq and microarray gene expression (GE) data concerning CRC patients and normal controls were downloaded from the public databases to make differential expression (DE) analyses (DEA), respectively. The differential expressed genes (DEGs) together with CRC related miRNAs were then input in our MiRNA-BD, a software to predict new biomarkers based on the miRNA-mRNA interaction network. There are 12 promising biomarkers that were predicted by the both RNA-seq and microarray data. Two (miRNA-21-5p and miRNA-31-5p) of them were previously reported as CRC diagnostic miRNA biomarkers. The expression level and miRNA-gene interaction network further identified the novel candidate miRNAs. miRNA-10b-5p, miRNA-30e-5p and miRNA-186-5p were finally found as the novel potential miRNA biomarkers for CRC early diagnosis. These findings were further confirmed by meta-analysis and biological function analysis. Associations of the novel candidate miRNA biomarkers with patients treatment and prognosis were also evaluated.