Preserved miR-361-3p Expression Is an Independent Prognostic Indicator of Favorable Survival in Cervical Cancer.

Dongkui Xu,Ying Li,Liang Zhang,Shikai Liu,Hairong Yao,Qian Li,Lili Song

doi:10.1155/2018/8949606

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to assess the independent prognostic value of miR-361-3p in terms of overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) in cervical cancer, as well as its possible regulative network. A retrospective analysis was performed by using data from the Cancer Genome Atlas-Cervical Cancer (TCGA-CESC). Results showed that decreased miR-361-3p expression was associated with lymphovascular invasion and poor responses to primary therapy. The patients with recurrence and the deceased cases had substantially lower miR-361-3p expression compared to their respective controls. By generating Kaplan-Meier curves of OS and RFS, we found that high miR-361-3p expression was associated with better survival outcome. More importantly, univariate and multivariate analysis confirmed that high miR-361-3p expression was an independent indicator of favorable OS (HR: 0.377, 95% CI: 0.233–0.608, p < 0.001) and RFS (HR: 0.398, 95% CI: 0.192–0.825, p = 0.013). By performing bioinformatic analysis, we identified 24 genes that were negatively correlated with miR-361-3p expression. Among the potential targeting genes, SOST, MTA1, TFRC, and YAP1 are involved in some important signaling pathways modulating cervical cancer cell invasion, migration, and drug sensitivity. Therefore, it is meaningful to verify the potential regulative effect of miR-361-3p on the expression of these genes in the future.

Highlights

MicroRNAs are a family of small, conserved, and noncoding RNAs that mainly exert regulative effect via repressing the transcription of targeting RNAs or inducing RNA degradation by binding to their 3′-UTR or 5′-UTR [1, 2]
Using normal and tumor tissue samples, we found that the normal tissues with high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) infection (N = 19) had significantly decreased miR-361-3p expression compared with the normal tissues without the infection (N = 25) (p < 0 001) (Figure 1)
By generating Kaplan-Meier curves of overall survival (OS) and recurrencefree survival (RFS), we found that the low miR-361-3p expression group had significantly worse OS (p < 0 001) and RFS (p = 0 0031) compared to the high miR-361-3p expression group (Figures 3(a) and 3(b))

Summary

Introduction

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a family of small, conserved, and noncoding RNAs that mainly exert regulative effect via repressing the transcription of targeting RNAs or inducing RNA degradation by binding to their 3′-UTR or 5′-UTR [1, 2]. A series of studies found that miR-361-5p acts as a tumor suppressor in multiple cancers. It suppresses lung cancer progression by targeting FOXM1 [3]; inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma cell growth by targeting CXCR6 [4]; decreases glycolytic metabolism, proliferation, and invasion of breast cancer by targeting FGFR1 and MMP1 [5]; and prevents the malignant progression of prostate cancer cells by targeting STAT6 [6]. One recent study found that in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), miR-361-3p could suppress tumor cell proliferation and metastasis by directly targeting SH2B1 [7]

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