hsa-miR-34a

pancreatic cancer

Relationship type:

Causal

Detection method for miRNA expression:

northern blot, qRT-PCR etc

down-regulated

Validated targets of miRNA from the reference:

unknown

Validated targets of miRNA from TarBase:

E2F3 : More...

Description:

Restoration of miR-34 expression in the pancreatic cancer cells by either transfection of miR-34 mimics or infection with lentiviral miR-34-MIF downregulated Bcl-2 and Notch1/2. miR-34 restoration significantly inhibited clonogenic cell growth and invasion, induced apoptosis and G1 and G2/M arrest in cell cycle, and sensitized the cells to chemotherapy and radiation. We identified that CD44+/CD133+ MiaPaCa2 cells are enriched with tumorsphere-forming and tumor-initiating cells or cancer stem/progenitor cells with high levels of Notch/Bcl-2 and loss of miR-34. More significantly, miR-34 restoration led to an 87% reduction of the tumor-initiating cell population, accompanied by significant inhibition of tumorsphere growth in vitro and tumor formation in vivo. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results demonstrate that miR-34 may restore, at least in part, the tumor suppressing function of the p53 in p53-deficient human pancreatic cancer cells. Our data support the view that miR-34 may be involved in pancreatic cancer stem cell self-renewal, potentially via the direct modulation of downstream targets Bcl-2 and Notch, implying that miR-34 may play an important role in pancreatic cancer stem cell self-renewal and/or cell fate determination. Restoration of miR-34 may hold significant promise as a novel molecular therapy for human pancreatic cancer with loss of p53-miR34, potentially via inhibiting pancreatic cancer stem cells.

Reference:

MicroRNA miR-34 inhibits human pancreatic cancer tumor-initiating cells | PMID:19714243
Ji Q, Hao X, Zhang M, Tang W, Yang M, Li L, Xiang D, Desano JT, Bommer GT, Fan D, Fearon ER, Lawrence TS, Xu L.
PLoS One. 2009 Aug 28;4(8):e6816.