Expression of microRNAs-106b in nonsmall cell lung cancer.

AIM

To explore the expression of microRNA-106b (miRNA-106b) in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

SETTINGS AND DESIGN

miRNAs are short regulatory RNAs that negatively modulate gene expression at the posttranscriptional level, and are deeply involved in the pathogenesis of several types of cancer. miRNA-106b has been shown to play an oncogenic role in tumor progression. The expression of miRNA-106b is detected in this study.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and Northern blotting were used to detect the expression level of miRNA-106b in 200 NSCLC samples.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED

All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 16.0 software. Results were statistically evaluated using the Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-Whitney U-test. Survival curves were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and P < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.

RESULTS

miRNA-106b expression is increased in NSCLC tissues. Statistical analysis showed that overexpression of miRNA-106b was strongly associated with lymph node metastasis, stage of tumor node metastasis classification, and poor prognosis. Moreover, there was a significant difference in the miRNA-106b expression levels between smoking and nonsmoking patients. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that miRNA-106b was an independent prognostic factor for NSCLC patients.

CONCLUSIONS

These data suggest that aberrantly expressed miRNA-106b may contribute to the development of NSCLC.