Profiles of differentially expressed circRNAs in esophageal and breast cancer

Peiyi Shi,1,* Jian Sun,2,* Biyu He,1 Huan Song,1 Zhongqi Li,1 Weimin Kong,2 Jianping Wang,3 Jianming Wang,1 Hengchuan Xue3 1Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First People’s Hospital of Yancheng City, Yancheng, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Thoracic Surgery, People’s Hospital of Yangzhong, Yangzhong, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Introduction: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) function as efficient microRNA sponges with gene-regulatory potential and are promising cancer biomarkers. In this study, we used the Arraystar Human circRNA Array to construct a genome-wide circRNA profile of esophageal squamous cell cancer (ESCC) and breast cancer (BC). Patients and methods: Expression levels between cancer lesions and adjacent normal-appearing tissues were compared. We observed 469 upregulated circRNAs and 275 downregulated circRNAs in ESCC. Hsa_circRNA_103670 was upregulated 20.3-fold, while hsa_circRNA_030162 was downregulated 12.1-fold. For BC, 715 circRNAs were upregulated, and 440 circRNAs were downregulated. Hsa_circRNA_005230 was upregulated 12.2-fold, while hsa_circRNA_406225 was downregulated 12.4-fold. Results: When we set the criteria as fold change in expression ≥2 between cancer and adjacent normal-appearing tissue with a P-value