MicroRNA Profiling in Intraocular Medulloepitheliomas

PurposeTo study the differential expression of microRNA (miRNA) profiles between intraocular medulloepithelioma (ME) and normal control tissue (CT).Material and MethodsTotal RNA was extracted from formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) intraocular ME (n=7) and from age matched ciliary body controls (n=8). The clinical history and phenotype was recorded. MiRNA profiles were determined using the Affymetrix GeneChip miRNA Arrays analyzed using expression console 1.3 software. Validation of significantly dysregulated miRNA was confimed by quantitaive real-time PCR. The web-based DNA Intelligent Analysis (DIANA)-miRPath v2.0 was used to perform enrichment analysis of differentially expressed (DE) miRNA gene targets in Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway.ResultsThe pathologic evaluation revealed one benign (benign non-teratoid, n=1) and six malignant tumors (malignant teratoid, n=2; malignant non-teratoid, n = 4). A total of 88 miRNAs were upregulated and 43 miRNAs were downregulated significantly (PConclusionsWe report significantly dysregulated miRNAs in intraocular ME tumors, which exhibited abnormal profiles in other cancers as well such as retinoblastoma and glioblastoma. Pathway analysis of all dysregulated miRNAs shared commonalities with other cancer pathways.