Serum miR-21 Expression and Its Correlation with Chemosensitivity in Osteosarcoma

Wu Ziyan; Liu Yang; Yang Shuhua

Abstract：Objective To investigate the correlation between serum miR-21 and chemosensitivity by detecting the expres-sion of serum miR-21 of patients with osteosarcoma and analyze its change before and after chemotherapy. Methods We ex-amed the level of serum miR-21 expression in 38 osteosarcoma patients(17 patients with lung metastasis)before and after chemotherapy by real-time RT-PCR and evaluated the clinical relevance and the correlation between chemosensitivity and miR-21. Results The expression level of serum miR-21 was higher in osteosarcoma patients(5. 68)than in healthy people(0. 23) (P = 0. 007)and the expression of miR-21 in lung metastasis patients(7. 26)increased obviously compare to non-lung metasta-sis(2. 32)(P = 0. 023). And the expression of serum miR-21 was closely correlated with corresponding miR-21 mRNA level in osteosarcoma tissues. Moreover,the expression of serum miR-21 was higher in non-effective chemotherapy samples(7. 65)than that in effective chemotherapy samples(2. 75)(P ﹤ 0. 001). Conclusion High expression of miR-21 correlates with lung me-tastasis and chemosensitivity in osteosarcoma patients. miR-21 in the peripheral blood may be used to diagnose osteosarcoma early and predict the chemosensitivity as a potential biomarker and miR-21 may be a potential therapeutical target for osteosar-coma patients.