Metapristone(RU486 derivative) inhibits endometrial cancer cell progress through regulating miR-492/Klf5/Nrf1 axis

Abstract

Background: Endometrial cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting women's health. The pathogenesis of endometrial cancer involves many signaling pathways which are related with transcription factors or microRNAs. Recent studies have reported that endometrial cancer is also related with the sexual-mediated hormones. The purpose of this research is to treat the endometrial cancer with the hormone-related drugs, and find out the specific molecular mechanism. Methods: In this study, RL95-2 cells and Ishikawa cells were used as the endometrial cancer cell models. miR-492 was transfected into RL95-2 cells and Ishikawa cells. The miRNA expression was measured by qRT-PCR. The protein expression was measured by western blot. Cell proliferation was monitored using the MTT assay and cell colony formation assay. Cell apoptosis was monitored using EdU assay. Results: Firstly, the results indicated that metapristone as a kind of hormone-related drugs could significantly inhibit the endometrial cancer cell growth through regulating cell apoptosis-related gene expression. Meanwhile, miR-492 was detected to be highly expressed in the endometrial cancer cell lines. Overexpression of miR-492 could promote the cell proliferation and inhibit the cell apoptosis. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the downstream target genes of miR-492 were Klf5 and Nrf1, which were inhibited by metapristone. At the animal level, metapristone also inhibited the endometrial cancer cell growth through down-regulating the expression of miR-492 and decreasing the protein level of Klf5 and Nrf1. Conclusion: Taken together, this study indicated that metapristone inhibited the endometrial cancer cell growth through regulating the cell apoptosis related signaling pathway and the expression of miR-492 and its downstream target genes (Klf5 and Nrf1), which provided the theoretical basis of endometrial cancer in clinical treatment.