WIPF1 antagonizes the tumor suppressive effect of miR-141/200c and is associated with poor survival in patients with PDAC

Yu Pan,Minggui Pan,Xianchao Lin,Maoen Pan,Ping Xiong,Zheyang Zhang,Heguang Huang,Fengchun Lu

doi:10.1186/s13046-018-0848-6

Abstract

BackgroundAberrant expression of Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein interacting protein family member 1 (WIPF1) contributes to the invasion and metastasis of several malignancies. However, the role of WIPF1 in human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains poorly understood.MethodsHuman pancreatic cancer samples from PDAC patients were collected for methylation analysis. Bioinformatic prediction program and luciferase reporter assay were used to identify microRNAs regulating WIPF1 expression. The association between WIPF1 expression and the overall survival (OS) of patients with PDAC was evaluated by using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The roles of miR-141/200c and WIPF1 on the invasion and metastasis of PDAC cells were investigated both in vitro and in vivo.ResultsWe found that compared to the surrounding non-cancerous tissues, there was significantly increased methylation of miR-200c and miR-141 in human PDAC tissues that resulted in their silencing, whereas the members of the other cluster of miR-200 family including miR-200a, miR-200b and miR-429 were hypomethylated. Our data show that forced expression of miR-141 or miR-200c suppressed invasion and metastasis of PDAC cells both in vitro and in xenograft and identified WIPF1 as a direct target of miR-141 and miR-200c. Both miR-141 and miR-200c inhibit WIPF1 by directly interacting with its 3′-untranslated region. Remarkably, silencing of WIPF1 blocked PDAC growth and metastasis both in vitro and in vivo, whereas forced WIPF1 overexpression antagonized the tumor suppressive effect of miR-141/200c. Additionally, by using TCGA database we showed that high expression of WIPF1 correlated with poor survival in patients with PDAC. Moreover, we show that miR-141 and miR-200c blocked YAP/TAZ expression by suppressing WIPF1.ConclusionsWe have identified WIPF1 as an oncoprotein in PDAC and a direct target of miR-141/miR-200c. We have also defined the miR-141/200c-WIPF1-YAP/TAZ as a novel signaling pathway that is involved in the regulation of the invasion and metastasis of human PDAC cells.

Highlights

Aberrant expression of Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein interacting protein family member 1 (WIPF1) contributes to the invasion and metastasis of several malignancies
We identified WIPF1 as a direct target of miR-141/200c and demonstrated that miR-141/200c interacts with the 3′-untranslated region of WIPF1 to inhibit WIPF1-Yes-associated protein (YAP)/Transcriptional coactivator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) pathway in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), suppressing PDAC growth and metastasis
We derived the mean values from all the CpG sites and found that the levels of CpG methylation of miR-141/200c were significantly higher in the PDAC tissues compared to the surrounding non-cancerous tissues (Fig. 1c)

Summary

Introduction

Aberrant expression of Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein interacting protein family member 1 (WIPF1) contributes to the invasion and metastasis of several malignancies. The role of WIPF1 in human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains poorly understood. The microRNA miR-200 gene family (including miR-200a, miR-200b, miR-200c, miR-141 and miR-429) which is clustered in two separate chromosomal locations: miR-200a/200b/429 on chromosome 1 and miR-141/200c on chromosome 12, has been characterized with high methylation and low expression in a variety of tumor cells. Most studies exploring the functional role and target genes of miR-200 in PDAC have depended on cell culture experiments with little in vivo characterizations [15,16,17,18]

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