MiRNA-203 suppresses tumor cell proliferation, migration and invasion by targeting Slug in gastric cancer

作者：Liuqing Yang, Hongwei Liang, Yanbo Wang, Shanting Gao, Kai Yin, Zhijian Liu, Xi Zheng, Ying Lv, Lei Wang, Chen‐Yu Zhang, Xi Chen, Guifang Xu, Weijie Zhang, Xiaoping Zou · 发表于：Protein & Cell · 年份：2016 · DOI：10.1007/s13238-016-0259-4 · 被引用次数：33 · 研究领域：RNA modifications and cancer、Epigenetics and DNA Methylation、MicroRNA in disease regulation

Dear Editor, Snail, a family of zinc finger transcription factors, plays an important role in morphogenesis and embryogenesis. Snail zinc finger family 2 (SNAI2 or Slug) has been demonstrated to regulate carcinogenesis of several human cancers including breast, prostate, head, neck, pancreas and endometrial carcinomas (Zhang et al., 2011; Markiewicz et al., 2012; Behnsawy et al., 2013; Smith et al., 2013; Tanaka et al., 2013), and it contributes to various tumorigenesis processes ranging from tumor cell invasion and metastasis to cell survival and proliferation (Phillips and Kuperwasser, 2014; Shi et al., 2015). However, its participation in the carcinogenesis of GC has only a few studies. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms of upstream and downstream regulation of Slug are largely unknown. Recently, Shi et al. confirmed miR-203 suppression in GC promotes Slug-mediated cancer metastasis (Shi et al., 2015). In this study, we explored the relationship of Slug and miRNAs using bioinformatics analysis, and demonstrated the roles of candidate miRNA, miR-203, in the carcinogenesis of gastric cancer cells. We first examined Slug expression in gastric cancer tissues by Western blotting. As shown in Fig. 1A, the Slug protein levels were significantly increased in the gastric cancer tissues compared to the corresponding adjacent normal tissues, suggesting that Slug may serve as an oncogene in the gastric cancer. In contrast, the Slug mRNA levels did not significantly differ between canc...