Journal article
Circulating cell-free miR-375 as surrogate marker of tumor burden in Merkel cell carcinoma
K Fan, C Ritter, P Nghiem, A Blom, ME Verhaegen, A Dlugosz, N Dum, A Woetmann, RW Tothill, RJ Hicks, M Sand, D Schrama, D Schadendorf, S Ugurel, JC Becker
Clinical Cancer Research | AMER ASSOC CANCER RESEARCH | Published : 2018
Abstract
Purpose: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive skin cancer with neuroendocrine differentiation. There is an unmet need for MCC-specific blood-based surrogate biomarkers of tumor burden; circulating cell-free miRNA may serve this purpose. Experimental Design: Expression of miR-375 was quantified in 24 MCC and 23 non-MCC cell lines, 67 MCC and 58 non-MCC tumor tissues, sera of 2 preclinical MCC models, and sera of 109 patients with MCC and 30 healthy controls by nCounter human-v2-miRNA expression or miR-375–specific real-time PCR assays. The patients' sera consisted of two retrospective (discovery and training) and two prospective (validation) cohorts. Results: miR-375 expression was hi..
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Awarded by National Institutes of Health
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was part of the FP7 project IMMOMEC funded by the European Commission, including funding for K. Fan. K. Fan was supported by the graduate program DK MOLIN of the Austrian FWF. P. Nghiem and A. Blom were supported by K24-; P30 CA015704. M.E. Verhaegen and A. Dlugosz were supported by NIH grants CA183084 and CA189352. R.J. Hicks is supported by NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship APP1108050. The authors like to express their appreciation to Jeanette Raleigh, Athena Hatzimihalis, and Jason Callahan from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia as well as Lisa Zimmer, Elisabeth Livingston, and Bastian Schilling from the University Hospital Essen, Germany, for the clinical evaluation of patients.