miRna in HCC Clinical Trial
Official title:
Study of microRNAs as a Diagnostic Tool for HCV-related Hepatocellular Carcinoma
The aim of this work is to study the role of circulating miRNAs in diagnosis of HCV related hepatocellular carcinoma.
Early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma can significantly improve the overall survival of
HCC patients, currently available diagnostic markers are still inadequate and limited by
their low sensitivity and specificity. For instance, the gold standard marker,
alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), has a false negative rate up to 40% for early stage of HCC. It is
worthy to mention that the level of AFP was reported in a normal range of 25% of patients
with advanced HCC. These discrepancies suggest the need of discovering new reliable
diagnostic markers for patients with HCC. miRNAs are small endogenous, non-coding, ssRNA that
are 21-30 nucleotides in length. As for the relationship between miRNA and HCC several
studies have demonstrated that the aberrant expression of specific miRNA can be detected in
HCC cells and tissues.
miRNAs expression profile analysis has allowed the characterization of 'identity' associated
with each type of human cancer and this 'identity' is correlated with carcinogenesis, tumor
progression, and response to tumor treatment.
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