ISSN: 1449-2288International Journal of Biological Sciences
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Int J Biol Sci 2014; 10(7):733-745. doi:10.7150/ijbs.8097 This issue Cite
Research Paper
MicroRNA-135a Inhibits Cell Proliferation by Targeting Bmi1 in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
1. Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Xijing Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, P.R. China
2. Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Lanzhou General Hospital of PLA, Lanzhou, Gansu 730050, P.R. China
3. Department of General Surgery, The 518 Central Hospital of PLA, Xi'an, Shanxi 710043, P.R. China
4. Department of General Surgery, The 155 Central Hospital of PLA, Kaifeng, He'nan 471000 P.R. China
* Zheng Dang, Wei-Hua Xu, Peng Lu, and Nan Wu are co-first authors and contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly lethal solid tumor due to the lack of reliable early detection markers and effective therapies. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression, are involved in tumorigenesis and have a remarkable potential for the diagnosis and treatment of malignancy. In this study, we investigated aberrantly expressed miRNAs involved in PDAC by comparing miRNA expression profiles in PDAC cell lines with a normal pancreas cell line and found that miR-135a was significantly down-regulated in the PDAC cell lines. The microarray results were validated by qRT-PCR in PDAC tissues, paired adjacent normal pancreatic tissues, PDAC cell lines, and a normal pancreas cell line. We then defined the tumor-suppressing significance and function of miR-135a by constructing a lentiviral vector to express miR-135a. The overexpression of miR-135a in PDAC cells decreased cell proliferation and clonogenicity and also induced G1 arrest and apoptosis. We predicted Bmi1 may be a target of miR-135a using bioinformatics tools and found that Bmi1 expression was markedly up-regulated in PDAC. Its expression was inversely correlated with miR-135a expression in PDAC. Furthermore, a luciferase activity assay revealed that miR-135a could directly target the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of Bmi1. Taken together, these results demonstrate that miR-135a targets Bmi1 in PDAC and functions as a tumor suppressor. miR-135a may offer a new perspective for the development of effective miRNA-based therapy for PDAC.
Keywords: miR-135a, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, Bmi1, cell proliferation, apoptosis
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