Tseng Hui-Hwa, Tseng Yu-Kai, You Jyun-Jie, Kang Bor-Hwang, Wang Tsung-Han, Yang Cheng-Mei, Chen Hung-Chih, Liou Huei-Han, Liu Pei-Feng, Ger Luo-Ping, Tsai Kuo-Wang
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Department of anatomic pathology, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Anticancer Res. 2017 Mar;37(3):1059-1066. doi: 10.21873/anticanres.11417.
Dysfunctional microRNAs (miRNAs) play a crucial role in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) progression. In the present study, we performed next-generation sequencing for miRNA profiling of the OSCC tissues and corresponding adjacent normal tissues in two patients with OSCC. We observed that 45 miRNAs were substantially up-regulated and 17 miRNAs were down-regulated in OSCC tissues. Since information on the biological role of miR-21-3p (passenger strand) in OSCC is limited, the expression levels of miR-21-3p were further evaluated in 95 OSCC tissue samples by a stem-loop real-time polymerase chain reaction. Our results revealed that miR-21-3p is significantly overexpressed in the OSCC tissues compared with the corresponding adjacent normal tissues (p<0.001). High miR-21-3p expression levels were significantly correlated with N classification (p=0.042). After transfection with a miR-21-3p inhibitor (antagomir), the invasive ability of the OSCC cells was significantly abrogated. Altogether, our findings indicated that miR-21-3p plays a crucial oncogenic role in cell metastasis during OSCC progression.
功能失调的微小RNA（miRNA）在口腔鳞状细胞癌（OSCC）进展中起关键作用。在本研究中，我们对两名OSCC患者的OSCC组织及相应的癌旁正常组织进行了miRNA谱的二代测序。我们观察到，OSCC组织中有45个miRNA显著上调，17个miRNA下调。由于miR-21-3p（过客链）在OSCC中的生物学作用信息有限，我们通过茎环实时聚合酶链反应在95个OSCC组织样本中进一步评估了miR-21-3p的表达水平。我们的结果显示，与相应的癌旁正常组织相比，miR-21-3p在OSCC组织中显著过表达（p<0.001）。miR-21-3p高表达水平与N分期显著相关（p=0.042）。用miR-21-3p抑制剂（反义寡核苷酸）转染后，OSCC细胞的侵袭能力显著消除。总之，我们的研究结果表明，miR-21-3p在OSCC进展过程中的细胞转移中起关键的致癌作用。
