MiR-1202 suppresses hepatocellular carcinoma cells migration and invasion by targeting cyclin dependent kinase 14.

Currently, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients still have poor survival outcomes mainly due to the powerful mobility of HCC cells. Increasing evidences hint that abnormally expressed miRNAs are capable to modulate HCC cells invasion and migration. MiR-1202 has been proposed as a ponderable molecular tumor marker in a variety of tumors. Here, results from real-time PCR indicated the decreased expression of miR-1202 in HCC. Clinically, statistical analysis showed that miR-1202 under-expression was closely associated with metastasis-related clinicopathologic characteristics. In addition, 5-year overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) rates of HCC patients with high miR-1202 expression were much better than that in low miR-1202 group. Functionally, gain- and loss-of -function studies were performed to investigate the roles of miR-1202. Intriguingly, Would healing assay and Transwell assays indicated that elevated miR-1202 weakened HCC cells migration and invasion abilities, while miR-1202 knockdown presented the contrary effects. Furthermore, cyclin dependent kinase 14 (CDK14) was identified as a downstream target of miR-1202 by bioinformatics analysis, Dual luciferase reporter assay, detection of CDK14 expression and Pearson correlation analysis. More importantly, rescue experiments demonstrated that CDK14 mediated miR-1202 to exert its anti-tumor effects, which further confirmed the above finding. Taken together, miR-1202 may act as a new biomarker and potential therapeutic target for HCC.