Medical Science: Updates and Prospects Vol. 9

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) poses a severe public health challenge in Southeast Asia, where alterations in microRNA (miRNA) expression drive its pathogenesis. This study utilised high-throughput Nanostring nCounter© technology to investigate serum miRNA expression profiles in 24 patients with advanced intrahepatic CCA (stratified into metastatic and non-metastatic subgroups) and 8 healthy controls. Out of 803 evaluated miRNAs, 239 showed significantly different expression levels across the groups (p<0.001). Notably, miR-302d-3p demonstrated the highest variance (p<9.02×10⁻⁷, FDR: 7.25×10⁻⁴), showing significant upregulation in metastatic CCA compared to both non-metastatic and healthy groups. While miR-320e was the most significantly upregulated miRNA overall (p<0.001), miR-223-3p, miR-23a-3p, and miR-302d-3p were also elevated in both CCA subgroups relative to controls. Conversely, miR-16-5p and miR-451a were markedly downregulated in the CCA cohorts. These findings highlight that a specific panel of circulating miRNAs could serve as valuable non-invasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for intrahepatic CCA, pending further validation in larger, multi-centre studies.