Tumour-Agnostic Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer and Biliary Tract Cancer

Prioritizing key synergistic circulating microRNAs for the early diagnosis of biliary tract cancer

Biliary tract cancer (BTC) is a highly aggressive malignant tumor. Serum microRNAs (ser-miRNAs) serve as noninvasive biomarkers to identify high risk individuals, thereby facilitating the design of precision therapies. The study is to prioritize key synergistic ser-miRNAs for the diagnosis of early BTC. Sampling technology, significant analysis of microarrays, Pearson Correlation Coefficients, t-test, decision tree, and entropy weight were integrated to develop a global optimization algorithm of decision forest. The source code is available at https://github.com/SuFei-lab/GOADF.git. Four key synergistic ser-miRNAs were prioritized and the synergistic classification performance was better than the single miRNA’ s. In the internal feature evaluation dataset, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for each single miRNA was 0.8413 (hsa-let-7c-5p), 0.7143 (hsa-miR-16-5p), 0.8571 (hsa-miR-17-5p), and 0.9365 (hsa-miR-26a-5p), respectively, whereas the synergistic AUC value increased to 1.0000. In the internal test dataset, the single AUC was 0.6500, 0.5125, 0.6750, and 0.7500, whereas the synergistic AUC increased to 0.8375. In the independent test dataset, the single AUC was 0.7280, 0.8313, 0.8957, and 0.8303, and the synergistic AUC was 0.9110 for discriminating between BTC patients and healthy controls. The AUC for discriminating BTC from pancreatic cancer was 0.9000. Hsa-miR-26a-5p was a predictor of prognosis, patients with high expression had shorter survival than those with low expression. In conclusion, hsa-let-7c-5p, hsa-miR-16-5p, hsa-miR-17-5p, and hsa-miR-26a-5p may act as key synergistic biomarkers and provide important molecular mechanisms that contribute to pathogenesis of BTC.

Zic family member 5 promotes survival in human pancreatic cancer and cholangiocarcinoma cells

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) are malignant tumors with poor prognosis because of the limited effectiveness of traditional chemotherapy and few effective molecular therapeutic agents. Here, we determined the essential roles of Zic family member 5 (ZIC5) in the survival of PDAC and CCA cells. The results showed that ZIC5 is strongly expressed in PDAC and CCA tissues, while ZIC5 expression is barely observed in most normal human adult tissues. Furthermore, ZIC5 expression is related to poor prognosis of patients with PDAC. ZIC5 knockdown via small interfering RNA decreased the phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), a protein that is associated with PDAC and CCA aggressiveness. However, ZIC5 knockdown induced cell death regardless of STAT3 activation, which is promoted by interleukin (IL) −6, a factor associated with inflammation. Furthermore, knockdown of ZIC5 in PDAC and CCA cells additively or synergistically induced apoptosis with the anti-cancer drug gemcitabine. Thus, ZIC5 constitutes a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of PDAC and CCA.

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ZIC5 is expressed in PDAC and CCA, while barely observed in normal adult tissues.

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ZIC5 expression is related to poor prognosis of patients with PDAC.

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ZIC5 knockdown induces apoptosis in several PDAC and CCA cell lines.

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Knockdown of ZIC5 additively or synergistically induces apoptosis with gemcitabine.