Two miRNA signatures for identifying nasopharyngeal carcinoma from head-neck tumors and the normal

Reports show that miRNAs have been implicated in various cancers and functions as both oncogenes and tumor suppressors in tumour initiation, progression, and response to treatment. Our study is conducted to identify circulating miRNA profile in NPC patients using whole blood samples with clinical significant diagnostic value. Microarray profiling identified 117 differentially expressed miRNAs (fold change≥1.5) between NPC patients and healthy control and 164 differentially expressed miRNAs (fold change≥1.5) between NPC and HNT patients and healthy control. Among them, we obtain two miRNA signatures to help to diagnose NPC. All samples are randomly assigned to training group and validation group. By Lasso regression and adaptive boosting, we construct a diagnostic model in training set, and verify the accuracy of the microRNA signature in validation set.