The Effect of Over-Expression of miR-20a on Cell Proliferation of Human T Cell Leukemia Cell Line.

BACKGROUND

Acute T Cell Leukemia (ALL) is an aggressive and prevalent human malignancy. Chemotherapy is the most frequent therapeutic strategy; however, cytotoxicity and recurrence of cancer are the main concerns. The discovery of microRNA (miRNA) drew the attention of scientists who were working on targeted cancer therapy to use the potential of gene regulation by using this small RNAs.

METHODS

miRanda, TargetScan, miRDB databases, and miRWalk software were applied to find probable miRNAs targeting 3'UTR of JAK1, STAT3, SOCS6, AKT1, APAF, BID, and Caspase9 mRNA. A lentiviral vector encoding miR-20a was used for overexpression of the miR-20a in C8166 cell lines to investigate the expression level of genes that are associated with the JAK/STAT signaling pathway and apoptosis using quantitative RTPCR. The effects of miR-20a overexpression also were examined on cell-cycle progression by flow cytometry.

RESULTS

qRT-PCR results indicated that overexpression of miR-20a in C8166 cells resulted in significantly elevated expression of BID and Caspase9 (p-value < 0.01). Overexpression of miR-20a in C8166 cells led to cell cycle arrest at the G0/G1 phase.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggested miR-20a may act as a tumor suppressor in CD4+ T cells and also has a potential therapeutic in these kinds of cancers.