MYC and hsa-miRNA-423-5p as biomarkers in nasopharyngeal carcinoma revealed by miRNA-mRNA-pathway network integrated analysis

The present study was performed to identify the dysregulated microRNAs (miRNAs/miRs) and mRNAs, and enriched pathways involved in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) through the establishment of an miRNA-mRNA-pathways network. mRNA and miRNA expression profiles were collected from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute. Differentially expressed genes and differentially expressed miRNA were selectively screened using the metaDE package. Following prediction of the risk genes and pathway pairs involved in NPC, an miRNA-mRNA-pathway network was constructed by merging the miRNA-mRNA pairs, the mRNA-pathway pairs and the mRNA-mRNA pairs. The miRNA and mRNA biomarkers, as well as the functional pathway pairs, were identified in the network analysis, based on the topological properties of nodes in the network. Additionally, 10-fold cross-validation was performed to evaluate the performance of the selected risk genes and their corresponding miRNA in NPC by calculating the area under the curve (AUC). In total, 99 upregulated and 841 downregulated genes, and 192 upregulated and 26 downregulated miRNAs were identified. The miRNA-mRNA-pathway network was established using 403 miRNA-mRNA pairs, including 40 miRNAs and 302 risk genes, as well as 22 prominent pathway pairs. Network analysis demonstrated that v-myc avian myelocytomatosis viral oncogene homolog (MYC) and hsa-miR-423-5p were the mRNA and miRNA signatures for NPC, respectively. The AUC of these biomarkers for NPC was 0.7568 and 0.7798, respectively. Additionally, the focal adhesion pair pathway in cancer was identified to be associated with NPC. MYC and hsa-miR-423-5p have been identified to be critical biomarkers in NPC as revealed by miRNA-mRNA-pathway network integrated analysis, suggesting a direction for further research into the diagnosis and treatment of NPC.