MicroRNA-21 in pancreatic cancer: correlation with clinical outcome and pharmacologic aspects underlying its role in the modulation of gemcitabine activity.
We demonstrate that antisense to miR-21 and miR-221 results in significant cell killing under various conditions and that antisense oligonucleotides targeted to miRNA represents a potential new therapy for pancreatic cancer.
These data suggest that miR-21 expression is increased in pancreatic cancer cells and that miR-21 contributes to the cell proliferation, invasion, and chemoresistance of pancreatic cancer.
One hundred microRNA precursors were aberrantly expressed in pancreatic cancer or desmoplasia (p < 0.01), including microRNAs previously reported as differentially expressed in other human cancers (miR-155, miR-21, miR-221 and miR-222) as well as those not previously reported in cancer (miR-376a and miR-301).