microRNA-423-3p promotes tumor progression via modulation of AdipoR2 in laryngeal carcinoma.

Despite of the variety of combined modality treatments for laryngeal carcinoma have been introduced, the distance recurrence rate and 5-year overall survival rate over the past decades are still the major issues, underlining the importance to better understand the biological bases that contribute to disease progression. Here, we reported that miR-423-3p overexpressed in primary laryngeal carcinoma cell line where it plays a critical role in tumor progression. Suppression of miR-423-3p expression resulted in decreasing cell proliferation, clonogenicity, cell migration and invasion. By using in silico prediction algorithms for target identification, AdipoR2 (adiponectin receptor 2) and DUSP4 (MAP kinase phosphatase 2) were identified to be potential targets of miR-423-3p. Overexpression of miR-423-3p was associated with epigenetic silencing of AdipoR2 in human laryngeal carcinoma samples, which have been previously implicated in suppression of tumor proliferation and angiogenesis. Luciferase reporter assays and western blot further confirmed the direct interaction of miR-423-3p with AdipoR2. Our findings have demonstrated that miR-423-3p plays an important oncogenic role in laryngeal carcinoma progression, and further suggest that suppression of miR-423-3p expression might be useful for its clinical management.