nsclc importantly their study did not include analysis of the 6 mirnas mir 30c 1 mir 616 mir 146b 3p mir 566 mir 550 and mir 939 which applicants detail in this study of adc of the 10 mirnas reported as differentially expressed chen et al 2011 mir 199a 5p was found to be substantially 15 64 fold increased in nsclc compared to control sera in keeping with this applicants found mir 199a 5p to be present in adc sera but absent from control sera the remaining 9 mirnas reported by chen et al 2011 were not substantially different in our adc and control sera differences in these two observations are likely to be contributed to by the fact that our study was specifically of adc while no specific associations with nsclc subtype were investigated by chen et al 2011 in their study of 30 serum mirnas in nsclc compared to controls heegaard et al 2011 int j cancer observed reduced quantities of 7 mirnas including mir 221 let 7a 155 17 5p 27a 106a and 146b interestingly our microarray analysis showed a similar trend for mir 221 let 7a 17 5p 27a and 106a for mir 155 applicants observed increased levels in stage 1 disease but reduced levels for stages 2 4 inclusively and so applicants did not consider this to be one of the most relevant mirnas from our study the discrepancy with mir 155 between the study by heegaard et al 2011 int j cancer and the work presented here.