MicroRNA-661 promotes non-small cell lung cancer progression by directly targeting RUNX3

Abstract

Lung cancer is the primary cause of cancer‑associated mortality in men and women worldwide. Increasing evidence indicates that abnormal microRNA (miRNA) expression contributes to the carcinogenesis and progression of multiple human cancers, including non‑small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Therefore, miRNAs exhibit the potential to act as biomarkers for the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of human malignancies. miRNA‑661 (miR‑661) has previously been demonstrated to be important in the development of various human cancer types. However, the expression levels, functions and underlying mechanisms of miR‑661 in NSCLC remain to be elucidated. The present study demonstrated that miR‑661 was upregulated in NSCLC tissues and cell lines. In addition, miR‑661 expression levels were significantly correlated with differentiation and tumor stage lymph node metastasis of NSCLC patients. Functional experiments demonstrated that miR-661 downregulation inhibited NSCLC cell proliferation and invasion in vitro. Furthermore, runt‑related transcription factor 3 (RUNX3) was identified as a direct target of miR‑661 in NSCLC. RUNX3 was expressed at a low level in NSCLC tissues and was negatively correlated with the miR‑661 expression level. Further experiments revealed that RUNX3 knockdown significantly rescued the effects of miR‑661 underexpression on NSCLC cell proliferation and invasion. In conclusion, the present findings indicated a role for miR‑661 as an oncogene in NSCLC via direct targeting of RUNX3, thus suggesting that miR‑661 may be used to develop novel therapies for NSCLC patients.

Current Landscape of Epigenetics in Lung Cancer: Focus on the Mechanism and Application

“…e current results indicate that the miR495-UBE2C-ABCG2/ERCC1 axis reverses cisplatin resistance by downregulating drug resistance genes in cisplatin-resistant NSCLC cells [22]. e present results also indicate that miR-661 plays an oncogenic role in NSCLC by directly targeting RUNX3, thus indicating that miR-661 can be used to develop new therapies for patients with NSCLC [72]. An increasing number of studies have shown that miRNAs could be used not only as specific biomarkers of cancer (diagnostic biomarkers) but also as dynamic markers of tumor status before (prognostic biomarkers) and during treatment (predictive biomarkers) [73].…”

Sema4C mediates EMT inducing chemotherapeutic resistance of miR-31-3p in cervical cancer cells

“…The collection of patients and specimens was similar with the method described previously 32,33 . Fifty-two paired human cervical cancer (CC) and adjacent nontumor cervical tissues were collected from the Tongji Hospital Affiliated with the Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) between January 2018 and December 2018.…”

“…Subsequently, luciferase reporter assay was performed described previously 33 . The cells were cultured in 24-well plates and cotransfected with the wt or mt Sema4C 3′-UTR vector together with 50 nM miR-31-3p mimics or NC miRNA with Lipofectamine 2000 Reagent (Thermo Fisher Scientific).…”

miR-486-5p inhibits cell proliferation and invasion through repressing GAB2 in non-small cell lung cancer

“…Based on the above research, we speculated that miR-486-5p expression level might be declined in regulation of the progression of NSCLC. Additionally, targeted genes such as NOB1 ( 19 ), RUNX3 ( 20 ) and FOXM1 ( 21 ) have been found to influence the tumorigenesis of NSCLC. Nonetheless, the role of GAB2 in NSCLC is rarely reported.…”