Biomarker roles identification of miR-106 family for predicting the risk and poor survival of colorectal cancer.

Background: Recent studies have extensively investigated the roles of miR-106 in colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the associations and molecular mechanism underlying the roles of miR-106 in CRC remain unclear. We aimed to thoroughly investigate the biomarker roles of miR-106 for predicting the risk and survival outcome in CRC.

Methods: We first conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis to quantitatively evaluate the roles of miR-106 in the diagnosis and prognosis of CRC. Then, we qualitatively explored the biomarker roles of miR-106 in CRC through an integrative bioinformatics analysis.

Results: The results indicated that miR-106 yielded a combined AUC of 0.79 (95% CI: 0.76-0.83), with a pooled sensitivity of 0.50 (95% CI: 0.32-0.68) and a pooled specificity of 0.93 (95% CI: 0.79-0.98) for discriminating CRC cases from normal controls. Moreover, patients with higher expression of miR-106 were significantly associated with shorter disease-free survival (HR: 1.73; 95%CI: 1.23-2.44) and overall survival (HR: 1.39; 95%CI: 1.09-1.77). Finally, gene ontology and pathway analysis demonstrated that miR-106 family was highly involved in the initiation and progression of CRC and indicated the potential molecular mechanism for miR-106 in CRC.

Conclusions: Our results indicated that miR-106 showed promising potential as diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for CRC. Nevertheless, the underlying molecular mechanism of miR-106 family involved in CRC requires further investigation.