| Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous small ncRNA molecules (21-23 bases in length) that regulate protein-coding gene expression by repressing translation or cleaving RNA transcripts in a sequence-specific manner. A growing body of evidence suggests that miRNAs are aberrantly expressed in many human cancers and that they play significant roles in the initiation, development and metastasis of these cancers. Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HSCC)has a very poor prognosis compared with other head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs), with 5-year survival rates ranging from 25 to 40%. This poor prognosis is thought to result from advanced primary disease, a high rate of loco-regional recurrence,distant metastasis. Survival rates of HSCC patients have not markedly improved despite recent advances in various treatment modalities, including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Understanding the molecular oncogenic pathways underlying HSCC could significantly improve diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of the disease.Objective To investigate the expression of microRNA-214(miR-214) in advanced hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma tissues and its effects on the invasion, migration and colone formation of FaDu cells, and explore the mechanism.Methods miR-214 expression in 30 cases of advanced hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma tissues and normal hypopharyngeal mucosa tissues was detected by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). miR-214 was upregulated through transfecting the overexpression vector hsa-mir-214 into FaDu cells. The influences of miR-214 upregulation on the invasion, migration, clone formation and TWIST expression were measured by Transwell invasion, Transwell migration, plate clone formation and Western blot assays, respectively. Luciferase reporter assays was used to detected that whether TWIST is the direct target gene.Results The expression of miR-214 in advanced hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma tissues (0.311±0.206) was significantly less than normal hypopharyngeal mucosa tissues (1.620±1.394; t=5.09, P<0.05).The expression of miR-214 was notably upregulated after tranfected with hsa-mir-214 compared with the negative control group (t=6.347, P<0.05). The migration and invasion ability of FaDu cells transfeced with hsa-mir-214 was decreased by comparison with negative control cells (t=11.6, P<0.01;t=6.499, P<0.05). There was no significant difference of the average clony number and the cloning efficiency between the experimental and negative control groups (t=0.592, P>0.05). Results of Western blot assay showed that, TWIST expression in the miR-214-overexpressed group was apparently decreased compared with that in the control group (t=6.545, P<0.05). The results of luciferase reporter assays indicated that miR-214 can indirectly target TWIST to inhabit the migration and invasion ability of FaDu cells.Conclusions miR-214 is expressed at a low level in advanced hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma tissues, and can obviously inhibit the invasion and migration abilities of FaDu cells, possibly because of its indirectly inhibiting effect on TWIST expression. Additionally, miR-214 plays no significant role in the proliferation of FaDu cells. |
PDF Full Text Request