Feasibility of global miRNA analysis from fine-needle biopsy FFPE material in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma treated with sorafenib

Sorafenib is the standard treatment for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the median overall survival (OS) benefit is only ~3 months, and sufficient biomarkers predicting treatment response are not available. The aim of the present study was to evaluate miRNA expression patterns from HCC tissue biopsies as potential biomarkers in patients under sorafenib treatment. Nineteen patients with advanced HCC treated with sorafenib were included. RNA was extracted from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) liver biopsies. miRNA expression profiling of 818 mature miRNAs was performed using GeneChip® miRNA Array 2.0 (Affymetrix). Global miRNA patterns were assessed using unsupervised hierarchical clustering analysis (UCA), and specific miRNAs with correlation with disease control rate (DCR) or good OS were evaluated by pairwise supervised analyses. UCA divided the patients into three distinct groups by their miRNA expression patterns. However, DCR or OS did not correlate with these sub-groups. We have identified several miRNAs that correlated with either DCR or OS (P