To summary, we found miR-221-3p could promote cell proliferation and inhibit apoptosis in PCa cells and circulating miR-221-3p could serve as a biomarker for PCa.
Thus, lncRNA GAS5 functioned as a competing endogenous RNA for miR-221, and it suppressed cell growth, metastasis, and gemcitabine resistance in PC by regulating the miR-221/SOCS3 pathway mediating EMT and tumor stem cell self-renewal.
These findings further indicate that the inhibition of miR-21 and miR-221 appear particularly suitable to target stem-like subpopulations and address their specific biological function to promote tumor progression in pancreatic cancer.
These data indicate that overexpressed miR-221/222 may play an oncogenic role in pancreatic cancer by inducing the expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9, thus leading to cancer cell invasion.
At last, we have also explained the role of miRNAs in diagnostic marker (miR- 200, miR-21, miR-103, miR-107, and miR-155) and as a therapeutic modulator (miR-34, miR-21, miR-221, and miR-101) in pancreatic cancer.
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.
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).