MicroRNA-152 inhibits ovarian cancer cell proliferation and migration and may infer improved outcomes in ovarian cancer through targeting FOXP1.

microRNA (miR) are a class of endogenous small non-coding RNA that are aberrantly expressed and are critical in tumorigenesis. Amongst them, miR-152 was reported to be dysregulated in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). However, the function and mechanism of miR-152 is not well understood. In the present study, total RNA was extracted from 58 ovarian epithelial carcinoma tissue samples and adjacent non-tumor tissues and measured by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The observations of the present study revealed that the expression of miR-152 was significantly downregulated in EOC specimens, as well as three ovarian cancer (OC) cell lines. The higher expression of miR-152 indicated a better overall survival rate in patients with EOC. Following miR-152 mimic transfection into SKOV3 or OVCAR3 cells, MTT assay revealed that cell proliferation was significantly inhibited (P<0.05). Although miR-152 had no effect on SKOV3 cell migration, miR-152 inhibited OVCAR3 cell migration. Bioinformatics analyses and luciferase reporter assays demonstrated that miR-152 targeted the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of the forkhead box protein 1 (FOXP1). Furthermore, introducing FOXP1 without the 3'-UTR abrogated the effect of miR-152-induced proliferation and migration alteration, respectively. In addition, the expression level of FOXP1 was higher in the EOC tumor tissues and cell lines. Additionally, the level of miR-152 and FOXP1 was inversely correlated in grade 3 and 4 ovarian tumor tissues. Altogether, these observations indicated that miR-152 may be involved in the inhibition of OC through repression of FOXP1. In the future, miR-152 and FOXP1 may act as novel biomarkers for early detection of EOC or therapeutic targets.