Project description:Background: Successful treatment of oesophageal cancer is hampered by recurrent drug resistant disease. We have previously demonstrated the importance of apoptosis and autophagy for the recovery of oesophageal cancer cells following drug treatment. When apoptosis (with autophagy) is induced, these cells are chemosensitive and will not recover following chemotherapy treatment. In contrast, when cancer cells exhibit only autophagy and limited Type II cell death, they are chemoresistant and recover following drug withdrawal. Methods: MicroRNA (miRNA) expression profiling of an oesophageal cancer cell line panel was used to identify miRNAs that were important in the regulation of apoptosis and autophagy. The effects of miRNA overexpression on cell death mechanisms and recovery were assessed in the chemoresistant (autophagy inducing) KYSE450 oesophageal cancer cells. Results: MiR-193b was the most differentially expressed miRNA between the chemosensitive and chemoresistant cell lines with higher expression in chemosensitive apoptosis inducing cell lines. Colony formation assays showed that overexpression of miR-193b significantly impedes the ability of KYSE450 cells to recover following 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) treatment. The critical mRNA targets of miR-193b are unknown but target prediction and siRNA data analysis suggest that it may mediate some of its effects through stathmin 1 regulation. Apoptosis was not involved in the enhanced cytotoxicity. Overexpression of miR- 193b in these cells induced autophagic flux and non-apoptotic cell death. Conclusion: These results highlight the importance of miR-193b in determining oesophageal cancer cell viability and demonstrate an enhancement of chemotoxicity that is independent of apoptosis induction.
Project description:Background: The Telomeric Repeat binding Factor 2 (TRF2), a key protein involved in telomere integrity, is over-expressed in several human cancers and promotes tumor formation and progression. Recently, TRF2 has been also found outside telomeres where it can affect gene expression. Here we provide evidence that TRF2 is able to modulate the expression of microRNAs (miRNAs), small non-coding RNAs altered in human tumors. Among the miRNAs regulated by TRF2, we focused on the miR-193b-3p, an oncomiRNA that positively correlates with TRF2 expression in human colorectal cancer patients. At the mechanistic level, the control of miR-193b-3p expression requires the cooperative activity between TRF2 and the chromatin organization factor CTCF. We found that CTCF physically interacts with TRF2, thus driving the proper positioning of TRF2 on a binding site located upstream the miR-193b-3p host-gene. The binding of TRF2 on the identified region is necessary for promoting the expression of miR-193b3p which, in turn, inhibits the translation of the onco-suppressive methyltransferase SUV39H1 and promotes tumor cell proliferation. The translational relevance of the oncogenic properties of miR-193b-3p was confirmed in patients, in whom the association between TRF2 and miR-193b-3p has a prognostic value.
Project description:Searching of target genes of miR-193b by transcriptome assay using 44K Whole Human Genome Microarray system (Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA) resulted in finding of several candidate genes. To search of targets genes of miR-193b, we performed transcriptome analysis to compare expression profiles between human pancreatic cancer cells, MIA PaCa-2, transfected with precursor of miR-193b and those transfected with a negative control precursor.
Project description:Cutaneous melanoma is an increasingly common form of skin cancer. The molecular mechanisms regulating melanoma progression are not completely understood. We speculated that specific miRNAs may be involved in melanoma development. We compared the miRNA expression profiles of benign nevi and metastatic melanomas. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering demonstrated a distinct miRNA expression pattern in metastatic melanomas compared to nevi. We identified miRNAs that were differentially expressed in melanoma. Notably, miR-193b was significantly down-regulated in the melanoma tissue examined. Using functional studies we demonstrated that over-expression of miR-193b significantly reduced melanoma cell proliferation, and arrested cell at G1 phase. Further gene expression analysis revealed that miR-193b regulated targets involved in cell cycle. Cyclin D1 was down-regulated by miR-193b at both the mRNA and protein level. This is the first study to show that the miR-193b may reduce cell proliferation by directly repressing cyclin D1. Overall, our study suggests that miRNAs are dysregulated in metastatic melanoma, and that miR-193b may play an important role in melanoma.
Project description:Cutaneous melanoma is an increasingly common form of skin cancer. The molecular mechanisms regulating melanoma progression are not completely understood. We speculated that specific miRNAs may be involved in melanoma development. We compared the miRNA expression profiles of benign nevi and metastatic melanomas. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering demonstrated a distinct miRNA expression pattern in metastatic melanomas compared to nevi. We identified miRNAs that were differentially expressed in melanoma. Notably, miR-193b was significantly down-regulated in the melanoma tissue examined. Using functional studies we demonstrated that over-expression of miR-193b significantly reduced melanoma cell proliferation, and arrested cell at G1 phase. Further gene expression analysis revealed that miR-193b regulated targets involved in cell cycle. Cyclin D1 was down-regulated by miR-193b at both the mRNA and protein level. This is the first study to show that the miR-193b may reduce cell proliferation by directly repressing cyclin D1. Overall, our study suggests that miRNAs are dysregulated in metastatic melanoma, and that miR-193b may play an important role in melanoma.
Project description:miR-193b functions as a tumor suppressor in liposarcoma cells. Microarray was used to identify the targets of miR-193b. The functions of identified miR-193b targets were further investigated in liposarcoma cells.
Project description:Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism of cellular self-digestion in which proteins and organelles are degraded through delivery to lysosomes. Defects in this process are implicated in numerous human diseases including cancer. To further elucidate regulatory mechanisms of autophagy, we performed a functional screen in search of microRNAs (miRNAs), which regulate the autophagic flux in breast cancer cells. In this study we identified the tumor suppressive miRNA, miR-101, as a potent inhibitor of basal, etoposide- and rapamycin-induced autophagy. Through transcriptome profiling, we identified three novel miR-101 targets, STMN1, RAB5A and ATG4D. siRNA-mediated depletion of these genes phenocopied the effect of miR-101 overexpression, demonstrating their importance in autophagy regulation. Importantly, overexpression of STMN1 could partially rescue cells from miR-101-mediated inhibition of autophagy, indicating a functional importance for this target. Finally, we show that miR-101-mediated inhibition of autophagy can sensitize breast cancer cells to 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT) mediated cell death. Collectively, these data establish a novel link between two highly important and rapidly growing research fields and present a new role for miR-101 as a key regulator of autophagy. MCF-7 cells were seeded in 6-cm plates and independent triplicate transfections were performed the following day with 50 nM miR-101 or scramble control using Lipofectamine 2000. Total RNA was harvested 24 h after transfection using Trizol reagent. There are a total of six arrays included in this experiment, including three biological replicates of mRNA expression after miR-101 over-expression and three scramble controls in MCF-7 cells.
Project description:MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have important roles in gene regulation. Dysregulation of miRNAs has been associated with tumorigenesis. Recent studies suggest miR-193b is a tumor suppressor gene. In a previous study, we reported that miR-193b represses cell proliferation and regulates cyclin D1 (CCND1) in melanoma. Now we demonstrate that miR-193b regulates myeloid cell leukemia sequence 1 (Mcl-1) in melanoma cells. miRNA microarray profiling revealed the miR-193b level in malignant melanomas was significantly downregulated compared to benign nevi, while a tissue microarray demonstrated overexpression of Mcl-1 in malignant melanoma. The Mcl-1 expressions were inversely correlated with the miR-193b levels in melanoma tissue samples, suggesting a potential regulatory role of miR-193b. Overexpression of miR-193b repressed Mcl-1 in melanoma cell lines. It is well known that Mcl-1 knockdown confers cell sensitivity to ABT-737, a small molecular inhibitor of Bcl-2, Bcl-XL and Bcl-w. We found miR-193b, through repressing Mcl-1 expression, could also sensitize melanoma cells that were refractory to ABT-737. Furthermore, miR-193b directly regulates Mcl-1 by targeting the 3’ untranslated region (3’UTR) of Mcl-1 mRNA. Interestingly, miR-193b may recognize sequences on the 3’UTR that do not base pair with its seed region. In conclusion, our study suggests the downregulation of miR-193b could be an early event during melanoma progression, and demonstrates miR-193b directly regulates Mcl-1 by targeting both seed and seedless sequences of the 3’ UTR.
Project description:Cutaneous melanoma is an increasingly common form of skin cancer. The molecular mechanisms regulating melanoma progression are not completely understood. We speculated that specific miRNAs may be involved in melanoma development. We compared the miRNA expression profiles of benign nevi and metastatic melanomas. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering demonstrated a distinct miRNA expression pattern in metastatic melanomas compared to nevi. We identified miRNAs that were differentially expressed in melanoma. Notably, miR-193b was significantly down-regulated in the melanoma tissue examined. Using functional studies we demonstrated that over-expression of miR-193b significantly reduced melanoma cell proliferation, and arrested cell at G1 phase. Further gene expression analysis revealed that miR-193b regulated targets involved in cell cycle. Cyclin D1 was down-regulated by miR-193b at both the mRNA and protein level. This is the first study to show that the miR-193b may reduce cell proliferation by directly repressing cyclin D1. Overall, our study suggests that miRNAs are dysregulated in metastatic melanoma, and that miR-193b may play an important role in melanoma. 8 benign nevi and 8 metastatic melanoma tissue samples were profiled by Agilent MicroRNA Microarray (V1.5).