Lung cancer holds the highest mortality rate in cancers amongst women and

men. This disease is also the most common cancer in the world. Lung cancer
accounted for 28% of cancer deaths in the year of 2012.The United States
spends close to $10.3 billion on lung cancer treatment yearly. According to
the American Lung Association the average lung cancer survival rate is 16.3%,
which is much lower than many other cancers(American Lung Association,
2013,pg.1). The many people that are unable to overcome lung cancer every
year, might have had a chance of survival if their was an easy test created
that would allow frequent testing because of this I chose to focus on
biomarker discovery to help aid in diagnosing lung cancer. In stage IA of lung
cancer there's a 49% 5 year survival rate, but in Stage IB 5 year survival rate.
In stage IIA their is a 30% 5 year survival rate, but a 31% 5 year survival rate.
In stage IIIA there is a 14% 5 year survival rate, but in stage B there is a 5% 5
year survival rate. In the last stage, stage IV, there is only a 1% 5 year survival
rate. As the stages increase, so does the chance of survival emphasizing the
importance of diagnosing lung cancer in its earlier stages, so treatment can
be received early on.(American Cancer Society,2013,pg.1) Also, According to
Stanford Medicine Cancer Institute the symptoms of lung cancer are
constant chest pain, shortness of breath, hoarseness, bloody or rust colored
sputum, fever, tumor near the lungs, fatigue, loss of appetite, loss of weight
without effort, bone fracture, or headaches. There is no guarantee that
these symptoms will occur in all patients that have been diagnosed with lung
cancer and each patient will experience different symptoms (Stanford
Medicine,pg.1). These risk factors and causes of cancer can not provide the
patient with a definite diagnosis of lung cancer because the causes and risks
are very similar to other diseases. A method that is able to use biomarkers to
identify lung cancer should be very efficient.
The need for a lung cancer biomarker has led to the increased interest in
miRNAs.MiRNAs are a newly discovered non-coding RNA that aid in gene
expression. MiRNAs are a type of RNA that attach themselves to mRNAs, in
order to down regulate them, in order to prevent them from becoming
proteins. These small RNAs are 22-24 nucleotides in length. It has been
proven that miRNA are involved with many cellular process, such as
apoptosis, stem cell differentiation, ageing and many other physiological
processes. In recent reports miRNA are frequently found within blood
plasma in a stable state. This has led to new scientific interests of possibly
using miRNA as biomarkers for diseases. (Pillai,2005).


In this experiment, miRNA expression levels of lung cancer patients with
adenocarcinoma were analyzed. After SVM-RNE was performed, it was
concluded that hsa-mir-21, hsa-let-7i, hsa-mir-22, and hsa-mir-3168 were
very significant. is a significant miRNA in the development of lung cancer.
It was hypothesized that significant miRNA would be found and they
would be present in the blood plasma if expression levels were analyzed
of lung cancer adenocarcinoma patients. Since the data showed a large
distribution between lung cancer tissues of the miRNA identified map
between its healthy tissue counterpart, it can be concluded that the
hypothesis was proven correct. This large significant difference between
lung cancerous tissues miRNA reads per million miRNA mapped and the
healthy tissues miRNAs show that these miRNAs of lung cancer patients
have abnormal expression, so these miRNA may be potential biomarker
candidates. Also, the hypothesis can be proven correct because the
miRNAs identified were all proven to be found present within blood
plasma, as are many other miRNAs, making them a perfect candidate to
be useful biomarkers. The analysis used in this experiment does not fully
conclude that these miRNA are biomarkers, but that they should be
candidates for more research on their ability to act as a biomarker for lung
cancer.
The discovery of miRNAs that are able to act as a biomarker of lung cancer
is greatly desired because this would decrease the invasive tests that a
lung cancer patient typically has to have in order to be diagnosed for lung
cancer. The use of biomarkers that are present in the blood, such as
miRNAs, would allow for a simple blood test to be performed to properly
diagnose a patient. This would also allow for more drugs to be created
specifically targeting the miRNAs that are proved to be a significant part
of lung cancer development.The results of this study do not accurately
represent the reads per million mapped of miRNAs in lung cancer patients
because their was only 41 datasets containing miRNA information.
Further in vitro testing would need to be performed in order to accurately
declare these miRNA as biomarkers.