MiR-34b inhibits the proliferation and promotes apoptosis in colon cancer cells by targeting Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway.

Kailun Ye,Tongguan Hui,Chunhua Xu

doi:10.1042/bsr20191799

Abstract

Colon cancer is one of the leading cause of cancer deaths that is severely threatening human health. Several microRNAs (miRNAs) have been found to be associated with the tumor genesis of colon cancer. The present study determined the expression of miR-34b in patients with colon cancer and studied the molecular mechanism of miR-34b in the proliferation and apoptosis of human colon cancer Caco-2 cells in vitro. In colon cancer patients, the expression of miR-34b was decreased in tumor tissues when compared with the adjacent non-tumor tissues. Furthermore, overexpression of miR-34b inhibited proliferation, migration and invasion, while promoted apoptosis in colon cancer cells. The online bioinformatics sites predicted possible regulatory genes of miR-34b and luciferase reporter assay verify that β-catenin was a direct target of miR-34b. Furthermore, miR-34b overexpression significantly decreased the expression of genes associated with Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. In conclusion, our results suggest that miR-34b may inhibit migration and invasion of human colon cancer cells by regulating Wnt/β-catenin signaling and miR-34b may be a key target for the treatment and diagnosis of colon cancer.

Highlights

Colon cancer remains one of the commonly diagnosed gastrointestinal tumor and it ranks third highest worldwide in terms of cancer-associated mortality rates [1]
We found that miR-34b expression was significantly reduced in colon cancer tissues when compared with the adjacent non-tumor tissues (Figure 1), indicating that miR-34b may be a potential tumor suppressor in colon cancer progression
We further investigated the effects of miR-34b on proliferation and apoptosis of Caco-2 cells, Cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay showed that miR-34b overexpression significantly inhibited cell proliferation (P

Summary

Introduction

Colon cancer remains one of the commonly diagnosed gastrointestinal tumor and it ranks third highest worldwide in terms of cancer-associated mortality rates [1]. Multiple regulatory factors are involved in the occurrence and development of colon cancer. An increasing number of studies have reported that miRNAs play vital roles in modulating multiple malignant cancers by acting as tumor suppressors and oncogenes [5,6]. MiR-34 family is considered to play important roles affecting cancer initiation and progression [9,10]. Previous studies have showed that aberrant expression of miR-34 family may be associated with the proliferation, migration and invasion of colon cancer [11,12]. Epigenetic methylation of miR-34a in combination with elevated expression of c-met and β-catenin was observed in colon cancer samples with liver metastases [13,14]. A recent study reported that Pien Tze Huang, a traditional Chinese medicine, License 4.0 (CC BY)

Methods

Results

Conclusion