AccScience Publishing / EJMO / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/EJMO025140088
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Plasma miR-378a as a novel biomarker for the early detection of colon cancer

Long Guo1 ,  Yan Zhang1 ,  Jun Liu2 ,  Xiaodan Li3 ,  Wende Li4 ,  Yanwen Liang1 ,  Wenjing Cheng5 ,  Hua Ye1* ,  Yi Liu1*
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1 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Research and Development of Natural Drugs, School of Pharmacy, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China
2 School of Medicine and Holistic Integrative Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
3 Department of Hongshan Community Hospital, People’s Hospital of Longhua District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
4 Guangdong Laboratory Animals Monitoring Institute, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
5 School of Ocean and Tropical Medicine, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China
EJMO, 025140088 https://doi.org/10.36922/EJMO025140088
Received: 4 April 2025 | Revised: 8 May 2025 | Accepted: 22 May 2025 | Published online: 1 July 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Introduction: Prognosis and treatment outcomes of colon cancer (CC) patients are poor due to the limitations of the current early diagnostic techniques. Recently, innovations in liquid biopsy technology have inspired research into identifying early peripheral blood-based diagnostic markers for CC. Objective: The objectives of the study are to evaluate the potential of plasma miR-378a as a diagnostic biomarker for early CC. Methods: In this study, quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was used to measure plasma miR-378a levels in CC patients, patients with colon polyps (CPs), and healthy controls (HCs). The study included 94 CC patients (56 males, 38 females; age range 35 – 82 years, mean age 57.7 ± 10.1 years) and 65 patients with CPs (40 males, 25 females; age range 42 – 91 years, mean age 63.0 ± 11.4 years), including 24 adenomatous polyps, 15 inflammatory polyps, 12 hamartomatous polyps, 14 hyperplastic polyps, and 45 HCs. The correlation between miR-378a and clinicopathology features was analyzed, and diagnostic value of miR-378a in each group was assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Results: CC patients had significantly lower plasma miR-378a levels compared to patients with CPs (p<0.0001) and HCs (p=0.0018). miR-378a levels were significantly correlated with TNM stage, tumor size, and lymph node metastasis (p<0.05). ROC curve analysis illustrated strong diagnostic discriminative power of miR-378a for CC and CPs, with an area under the curve of 0.8202 (95% confidence interval: 0.7528 – 0.8876), sensitivity of 89.36%, and specificity of 66.15%. Conclusion: These findings suggest that plasma miR-378a may serve as a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of CC.

Keywords
Mir-378a
Colon cancer
Early diagnosis
Marker
Plasma
Funding
This project was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (grant number: 2018A0303130252) and the Discipline Construction Project of Guangdong Medical University (grant number: 4SG21011G).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Eurasian Journal of Medicine and Oncology, Electronic ISSN: 2587-196X Print ISSN: 2587-2400, Published by AccScience Publishing
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