MicroRNA miR-152 Methylation in Patients With Ovarian Cancer: Prognostic Potential Analysis

MicroRNAs play a crucial role in the regulation of biological processes variety associated with neoplasm development and progression, such as cell proliferation and differentiation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, inflammation, migration, invasion and metastasis, epithelial-mesenchymal transition and others. The purpose of this work was to investigate the DNA methylation level of miR-152 in 25 paired tissue samples from patients with an established diagnosis of ovarian cancer and various histological and clinical characteristics by the MS-HRM method. Our results indicate a higher frequency of the miR-152 methylation in ovarian tumor tissues (51.5% ± 5.4) compared to normal tissues (43.9% ± 7.2), however, the differences did not reach the statistical level significance, p = 0.5. There was no relationship between the metastatic process in the tumor depending on the level of methylation (46.5% ± 11.9 in patients with metastases vs 45.2% ± 7.8 in cases without metastases). One patient with the highest methylation level of all samples researched – 89.91%, despite a good response to primary therapy, had a relapse of the disease after 7 years. In addition, there is a tendency for a lower level of miR-152 methylation in patients with a complete response to therapy, in contrast to women with a partial response or the tumor process stabilization. Thus, our research provides evidence in favor of the suppressor function of the miR-152 in tumor, and its possible role in sensitivity to polychemotherapy, however, the results did not reach a statistical level of significance and additional studies on larger material are required.