De novo sequencing of circulating microRNAs in locally advanced breast cancer

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been recently detected in the circulation of cancer patients, where they are associated with clinical parameters. Discovery profiling of circulating small RNAs has not been previously reported in breast cancer (BC), and was carried out in this study to identify blood-based small RNA markers of BC clinical outcome. The pre-treatment sera of 42 stage II–III locally advanced and inflammatory BC patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) followed by surgical tumor resection were analyzed for marker identification by deep sequencing all circulating small RNAs.