Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in tumor development and progression. The purposes of the study was to investigate the role of miR-155 in cervical cancer.
Methods: Quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to examine miR-155 expression in cervical cancer tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The association with overall survival of patients was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) was used to suppress miR-155 expression in cervical cancer cells. In vitro assays were performed to further explore the biological functions of miR-155 in cervical cancer.
Results: We found that miR-155 expression was markedly up-regulated in cervical cancer tissues and correlated with FIGO stage, lymph nodes metastasis, vascular invasion and HPV. Patients with high miR-155 expression level had poorer overall survival than those with low miR-155 expression. Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis suggested that increased miR-155 was an independent prognostic indicator for cervical cancer (P=0.007; HR=2.320; 95%CI: 1.259-4.276). Moreover, knockdown of miR-155 was demonstrated to inhibit cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro.
Conclusion: Our study presents that miR-155 is a novel molecule involved in cervical cancer progression, which provide a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target.
Keywords: Cervical cancer; MiR-155; Overall survival; Prognosis.
Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.