Gathering novel circulating exosomal microRNA in osteosarcoma cell lines and possible implications for the disease

Abstract

One of the goals of personalized medicine is to understand and treat diseases with greater precision through the molecular profile of the patient. This profiling is becoming a powerful tool for the discovery of novel biomarkers that can guide physicians in assessing, in advance, the disease stage, and monitoring disease progression. Circulating miRNAs and exosomal miRNAs, a group of small non-coding RNAs, are considered the gold standard diagnostic biomarkers for human diseases. We have previously demonstrated that osteosarcoma-derived exosomes are able to influence crucial mechanisms inside tumor niches, inducing osteoclast differentiation, and sustaining bone resorption activity. Here we discovered, through Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), eight novel microRNAs in three different osteosarcoma cell lines, and assessed the selective packaging into the exosomes released. We then investigated, as proof-of-principle, the presence of the novel microRNAs in osteosarcoma patient samples, and found that 5 of the 8 novel microRNAs were more present in circulating exosomes of osteosarcoma patients compared with the controls. These results raise a question: Could the 8 novel microRNAs play a role for osteosarcoma pathogenesis? Although still premature, the results are encouraging, and further studies with a validation in a larger cohort are needed.