Research Papers:
miR1236 downregulates alphafetoprotein thus causing PTEN accumulation which inhibits the PI3K/Akt pathway and malignant phenotype in hepatoma cells
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Rui Gao1,*, Chunli Cai1,*, Jiancheng Gan2,*, Xi Yang1, Zeyu Shuang3, Min Liu1, Shengping Li3 and Hua Tang1
1 Tianjin Life Science Research Center and Basic Medical School, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
2 Department of Surgery, Secondary Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China
3 State Key Laboratory of Oncology in Southern China, Department of Hepatobiliary Oncology, Cancer Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
* These authors contributed equally to this work
Correspondence to:
Hua Tang, email:
Shengping Li, email:
Keywords: microRNA; microRNA-1236; AFP; PTEN; hepatocellular cancer
Received: November 09, 2014 Accepted: January 14, 2015 Published: January 21, 2015
Abstract
Alpha fetoprotein (AFP) is a clinical biomarker of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Here, we found that miR-1236 is down-regulated, whereas AFP is highly expressed in HCC tissues and cells. We demonstrated that miR-1236 directly targets the 3’UTR of AFP and down-regulates its expression. Also, miR-1236 inhibited and AFP stimulated proliferation, migration, invasion and vasculogenic mimicry (VM) of HCC. In agreement, AFP over-expression counteracted the inhibitory effect of miR-1236. We demonstrated that AFP promoted the ubiquitination of PTEN, thus decreasing PTEN levels, while miR-1236 inhibited the PI3K/Akt pathway.