Abstract
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common malignant tumor worldwide and is a serious threat to human health. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a key role in oncogenesis and cancer progression. MiRNA-125 (miR-125) is an important miRNA that is dysregulated in several kinds of cancers. Thus, we investigated the expression and effects of miR-125 and Transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) for a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of tumor progression in CRC, which may provide an emerging biomarker for diagnosis and treatment of CRC. We measured the expression levels of miR-125 in CRC tissues, adjacent tissues, and cell lines (e.g. HCT116, SW480, FHC) by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The effect of miR-125 on proliferation and invasion in CRC cells was detected by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8), clone formation assay, and transwell assay. Western blotting and qRT-PCR were used to investigate the expression of TAZ after knocking down miR-125 in HCT116 cells or overexpressing miR-125 in SW480 cells. MiR-125 was significantly down-regulated in CRC compared with pericarcinomatous tissue from 18 patients. An miR-125 inhibitor promoted CRC cell proliferation and invasion, while miR-125 mimic had the opposite effect. Moreover, we found that TAZ was an miR-125 target and the siRNA knockdown of TAZ could reverse the effect of the miR-125 inhibitor on proliferation and invasion in HCT116 cells. The present study shows that miR-125 suppresses CRC proliferation and invasion by targeting TAZ.
Highlights
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in males and females, with an estimated 145600 new cases and 51020 deaths occurring worldwide in 2019 [1]
We studied the expression of miR-125 in two common CRC cell lines (SW480 and HCT116) and a normal human colon epithelial cell line (FHC), which showed that the levels of miR-125 in FHC cells were higher than in SW480 and HCT116 cells, and expression in SW480 was lower than HCT116 cells (Figure 1B)
We analyzed the expression of miR-125 in primary CRC tissues and related cancer cell lines
Summary
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in males and females, with an estimated 145600 new cases and 51020 deaths occurring worldwide in 2019 [1]. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-protein coding RNAs that suppress gene expression by binding complementary sequences in the 3 -untranslated regions (3 -UTR) and affecting mRNA stability or interfering with protein translation [3]. Croce and Calin [4] concluded that miRNA may contribute to tumorigenesis after reviewing several studies. Several reports indicate that miRNAs affect tumorigenesis and progression, including liver cancer, cervical cancer, and CRC [5,6,7]. MiR-125 has been found to be down-regulated in CRC tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues and may play a suppressive role in the development of CRC [13,14,15]
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