miRNA expression signature associated with lymphatic dissemination in locally advanced prostate cancer

Background: Prostate cancer is one of the most common and socially significant cancers in men. The aim of our work is to reveal changes of miRNAs expression profiles associated with lymphatic dissemination in prostate cancer and identify the most prominent miRNAs as potential prognostic markers for future studies.Results: We performed high-throughput miRNA-seq of prostate cancer tissue samples (total 47 samples) with and without lymphatic dissemination (N0 and N1 groups). We analyzed differential expression of microRNAs between N0 and N1 groups and identified the most affected pathways for microRNAs that are associated with lymphatic dissemination. We revealed two expression clusters of samples (G0 and G1) strongly associated with N0 and N1 groups, respectively. The expression cluster G1 is present in almost all samples with lymphatic dissemination. mRNA targets of microRNAs overexpressed in G1, are enriched with participants of oncogenic pathways associated with the progression, invasion, proliferation and adhesion. We selected five microRNAs as potential markers of N1: miR-20a-5p, miR-106a-5p, miR-93-5p, miR-15b-5p.Conclusions: We found miRNA expression signature and cluster of samples (G1) associated with lymphatic dissemination in the Russian patients cohort. Many of these microRNAs are well known players in oncogenic transformation or tumor suppression. Further experimental studies on an extended sampling are required to validate our results.