Bioinformatics Identification of miRNA-mRNA Regulatory Network Contributing to Lung Cancer Invasion

Over the past 15 years, significant insights have been gained into the roles of miRNAs in cancer. In various cancers, miRNAs can act as oncogenes, tumor suppressors, or control the metastasis process by modulating the expression of numerous target genes. The aim of the present study was to identify molecular network of miRNA-mRNA regulating lung cancer invasion, by bioinformatics approaches.

In this experimental study that was done in 2022, gene expression profiles of patients with lung cancer were collected from the RNASeq data of Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), by TCGAbiolinks package. Differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs were identified using “limma” and “edgeR” R packages and their targets were predicted by 2 databases; miRWalk, and Targetscan. Subsequently, the interaction regulatory network of miRNA-mRNA visualized using Cytoscape software. Data analysis was performed using Testing Multiple Hypotheses and False Discovery Rate.

The results of bioinformatics analysis of the lung cancer invasion specific miRNA-mRNA regulatory network, showed that six hub miRNAs including; hsa-let-7c-5p, hsa-let-7b-5p, hsa-let-7e-5p, hsa-miR-6838-5p, hsa-miR-320b and hsa-miR-4458, are regulator of the lung cancer invasion up-regulated genes and four hub miRNAs are regulator of this situation down-regulated gene including; hsa-miR-92a-3p, hsa-miR-204-5p ,hsa-miR-24-3p and hsa-miR-506-3P.

The results in our study suggest that a specific miRNA-mRNA network is associated with the lung cancer invasion which this new insight into the molecular mechanism of lung cancer invasion result in the identification of molecular biomarkers and therapeutic targets for this malignancy.