Methylation of a panel of microRNA genes is a novel biomarker for detection of bladder cancer.

Background: Dysregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) has been implicated in bladder cancer (BCa), although the mechanism is not fully understood.

Objective: We aimed to explore the involvement of epigenetic alteration of miRNA expression in BCa.

Methods: Two BCa cell lines (T24 and UM-UC-3) were treated with 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-aza-dC) and 4-phenylbutyric acid (PBA), after which their miRNA expression profiles were analyzed using a TaqMan array (Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA, USA). Bisulfite pyrosequencing was used to assess miRNA gene methylation in 5 cancer cell lines, 83 primary tumors, and 120 preoperative and 47 postoperative urine samples. Methods: Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to assess the diagnostic performance of the miRNA gene panel.

Conclusions: Of 664 miRNAs examined, 146 were upregulated by 5-aza-dC plus PBA. CpG islands were identified in the proximal upstream of 23 miRNA genes, and 12 of those were hypermethylated in cell lines. Among them, miR-137, miR-124-2, miR-124-3, and miR-9-3 were frequently and tumor-specifically methylated in primary cancers (miR-137: 68.7%; miR-124-2: 50.6%; miR-124-3: 65.1%; miR-9-3: 45.8%). Methylation of the same four miRNAs in urine specimens enabled BCa detection with 81% sensitivity and 89% specificity; the area under the ROC curve was 0.916. Ectopic expression of silenced miRNAs in BCa cells suppressed growth and cell invasion. Conclusions: Our results indicate that epigenetic silencing of miRNA genes may be involved in the development of BCa and that methylation of miRNA genes could be a useful biomarker for cancer detection.