MicroRNAs as potential targets for prevention and treatment of endometrial cancer.

B114

Endometrial cancer is the third most common gynecologic malignancy and the ninth most common malignancy for females overall in Hong Kong. Approximately 80% or more of these cancers are endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinomas. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionally conserved noncoding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression at the level of translation. Recently, the development of miRNA expression analysis has proved to be a valuable tool for disease classification and an implicating of novel therapeutical targets in human diseases including cancer. The aim of this study was to reveal miRNAs contributing to progression of endometrioid endometrial cancer, which may impact prognosis and treatment of the malignant disease. The miRNA expression analysis was completed in a set of 13 microdissected sporadic endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinomas including 9 in early stage (FIGO stage I-II) and 4 in late stage (FIGO stage III), and 5 microdissected normal endometrium specimens using Taq^®Man real-time RT-PCR of 156 miRNAs. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering displayed a distinct gathering of normal control samples. When looking insight into the miRNA expression profiles in different stages of cancer it was shown that 5 miRNAs including hsa-miR-125b (2.27-fold), hsa-miR-98 (3.44-fold), hsa-miR-30d (4.3-fold), hsa-miR-205 (4.72-fold) and hsa-miR-219 (10.24-fold) were up-regulated while hsa-miR-370 (-3.46-fold) was down-regulated significantly in late stage as compared to that in early stage of cancer. The dysregulation of these miRNAs appeared to be involved in the progression of endometrial cancer. These miRNAs of interest might be as the targets for inhibition of progression and therapy of endometrial cancer. Further extended and functional studies of these miRNAs are required to confirm the potential use of them in the endometrial cancers.