Department of Applied Cell Sciences, Faculty of Advanced Medical Sciences, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; Immunology Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; Student Research Committee, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Halic University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Gene. 2021 Oct 30;801:145844. doi: 10.1016/j.gene.2021.145844. Epub 2021 Jul 16.
In the treatment of breast cancer (BC), as an important type of cancer in women, the specific cells, called cancer stem cells (CSCs), are the reason of failure and metastasis. So, targeting CSCs can be used as a novel strategy in cancer therapy in addition to common therapeutic strategies. According to the importance of CSCs, we tried to find a correlation between stemness and metastatic characteristics of BC cells, to address whether CSCs are a potential target for cancer therapy. Here, we evaluated the NANOG inhibition by siRNA and the increase of Let-7a levels by miRNA mimic in breast cancer cells and the effects of these changes on biologic aspects like cell apoptosis, stemness and invasion. Our results showed that the inhibition of NANOG combined with Let-7a restoration contributed to significant decrease in malignant phenotypes and stemness feature of BC cells. In conclusion, these findings showed that the combination of Let-7a miRNA mimic and Nanog siRNA could be exploited as a new treatment strategy to improve the cancer therapy outcome.
在乳腺癌（BC）的治疗中，作为女性中重要的癌症类型，特定的细胞，即癌症干细胞（CSC），是失败和转移的原因。因此，除了常规的治疗策略外，靶向 CSC 可以作为癌症治疗的一种新策略。鉴于 CSC 的重要性，我们试图找到乳腺癌细胞干性和转移特征之间的相关性，以确定 CSC 是否是癌症治疗的一个潜在靶点。在这里，我们通过 siRNA 抑制 NANOG 和 miRNA 模拟物增加 Let-7a 水平来评估它们对细胞凋亡、干性和侵袭等生物学方面的影响。我们的结果表明，NANOG 抑制与 Let-7a 恢复的联合作用导致 BC 细胞恶性表型和干性特征显著降低。总之，这些发现表明，Let-7a miRNA 模拟物和 Nanog siRNA 的联合应用可以作为一种新的治疗策略，以提高癌症治疗的效果。
