My research specifically looks at the colorectal tumor's adjacent normal tissue and its small RNA (mainly miRNA) expression and its role as a prognostic marker. Currently I wish to interrogate data from web repositories such as TCGA and evaluate the expression of a few miRNAs that I am interested in?
The problem that I however face is that there are extremely few adjacent normal tissue expression data for miRNA or mRNA in resources such as TCGA for colorectal cancer, making them unsuitable to have a statistically strong cohort for evaluation purposes. Could the research gate community guide me to suitable resources or perhaps suggest alternatives to better approach such an evaluation.
To be clear - (a) I am looking at specifically tumor tissue adjacent normal tissue data, and not a healthy normal based data. This is because I am looking at the tumor micro-environment which will not be available in a healthy individual. (b) I have already identified potential miRNAs through my own analysis of patient samples. I wish to perform the above mentioned analysis to have a stronger validation of my dataset. (c) Blood based expression data for the CRC patients is not suitable for my study.
Thanks.