J Cancer 2015; 6(12):1295-1305. doi:10.7150/jca.13176 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Division of Urology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario
2. Department of Pathobiology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Toronto
3. Department of Pathology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Toronto, Ontario, Canada
4. Biological Sciences, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
* These authors contributed equally to the manuscript.
Background: MicroRNA (miRNA) have been shown to regulate gene expression in many cancers. MiR-182 has recently been found to be prognostic for patients treated with radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer. We sought to assess miR-182 as a prognostic marker and understand its role in prostate cancer progression and metastasis.
Methods: We analysed miR-182 expression among 147 men treated for prostate cancer using biochemical recurrence and metastasis as the endpoints. We examined miR-182 expression in prostate cancer cells and created cell lines that overexpressed miR-182 for functional assays. Finally, we examined pathways through which miR-182 may function using prediction algorithms and confirmed by Western blotting and knock-down assays.
Results: We found that miR-182 was not associated with biochemical recurrence (p=0.1111) or metastasis (p=0.9268) following radical prostatectomy. However, in mechanistic assays, we found that miR-182 expression was higher among aggressive prostate cancer cells and that ectopic miR-182 expression resulted in increased proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro. We identified FOXO1 as regulated by miR-182 in prostate cancer cells, confirmed that ectopic miR-182 expression resulted in diminished FOXO1 levels, and showed that miR-182 inhibition results in increased FOXO1 levels. Expression of FOXO1 (p=0.0014) in tumors from patients who developed biochemical recurrence compared to tumors from patients who were recurrence-free five years after their radical prostatectomy.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that miR-182 may act to increase prostate cancer proliferation, migration and invasion through suppression of FOXO1. This may be valuable in the development of further therapeutic interventions.
Keywords: MicroRNA, prostatic neoplasms, prostatectomy.