Table 2.
Signatures of circulating miRNAs as potential diagnostic biomarkers of lung cancer in other body fluids.
| miRNA Signature | Sample Type | Type of Biomarker | Cohort Size | Method of Quantification and Normalization | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| miRNA-126 and let-7a | Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) | Diagnostic (early-stage AD) |
AD (n = 13) and nontumor pathology controls (n = 15) | qPCR; endogenous control miR-30a-5p | Kim et al., 2018 [67] |
| miR-1285, miR-1303, miR-29a-5p, and miR-650 | Bronchial lavage (BL) | Diagnostic (LC) | LC (n = 30) and noncancer controls (n = 30) | qPCR; exogenous control cel-miR 39 | Rehbein et al., 2015 [93] |
| miR-198 (combined with carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and cytokeratin 19 fragment (CYFRA 21-1)) | Pleural effusion (PE) | Diagnostic (AD with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) vs. patients with benign pleural effusion (BPE)) | MPE (n = 52) and BPE patients (n = 55) | Microarray and qPCR; endogenous miR-192 and snRNA U6 | Han et al., 2013 [13] |
| miR-21(miRNA from EVs) | Pleural lavage | Diagnostic, association with positive cytology and pleural invasion (AD) | AD (n = 41) | Digital PCR | Watabe et al., 2020 [68] |
| EVs-miRNAs miR-1-3p, miR-144-5p, and miR-150-5p |
Pleural lavage | Diagnostic (NSCLC vs. BPE patients) |
AD and SCC (n = 21) and BPE patients (n = 25) | PCR array; not specified | Roman-Canal et al., 2019 [12] |
| miR-31 and miR-210 * | Sputum * | Diagnostic, to improve the specificity of computed tomography (CT) (LC vs. cancer-free smokers) | LC (n = 130) and cancer-free smokers (n = 141) | qPCR; snRNA U6 | Shen et al., 2014 [11] |
LC: lung cancer, AD: adenocarcinoma; MPE: malignant pleural effusion; BPE: benign pleural effusion; EVs: extracellular vesicles. * miRNAs are from the cell pellet collected from the sputum by centrifugation; therefore, they are endogenous miRNAs.