Investigation of GNB1 derivative circular RNAs hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362 expressions in colorectal cancer patients: potential new diagnostic factors

We aim to investigate the relationship between hsa_circ_0009361 plus hsa_circ_0009362 expression levels and the clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are implicated in the progression and development of CRC. CircRNAs have been recognized as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, opening up a new window to comprehend the molecular basis of CRC. Given the significance of circRNAs and the G protein subunit b1 (GNB1) gene in malignancies, the goal of the current investigation was to determine the expression levels of GNB1 derivative circular RNAs circGNB1 (hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362) in CRC and adjacent control tissues.

The expression levels of the GNB1 derivative circular RNAs (hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362) were evaluated using the quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) method in 45 CRC tissues and adjacent control tissues. Furthermore, we analyzed the diagnostic power of the mentioned circRNAs by plotting the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The association between the expression levels of hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362 was evaluated using correlation analysis.

Our results revealed that the expression levels of hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362 were significantly down-regulated in CRC tissues compared to the adjacent control group. Analysis of patients’ clinicopathological features indicated that expressions of hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362 were differently related to lymph vascular invasion (P<0.001). ROC curve results showed that these circRNAs are good candidate diagnostic biomarkers in CRCs. Pearson’s correlation test revealed a positive correlation between hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362 expression levels (P<0.0001).

These results demonstrated that hsa_circ_0009361 and hsa_circ_0009362 expression levels may be used as possible diagnostic biomarkers for CRC.