Furthermore, our results showed that miR-592 targets the ROCK1 transcript and suppresses glioma cell growth and invasive growth, thereby providing a potential therapeutic target for glioma treatment.
In our study, the expression of ROCK1 in glioma tissues was examined by real-time PCR and the relationship between ROCK1 expression and clinical characteristics of patients with glioma was also analyzed.
The Rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK1) has been found to act as key regulator of actin cytoskeleton reorganization, a process closely associated with cancer cell invasion. microRNA-145 (miRNA-145) has been recently shown to act as a suppressor in several types of tumor, including glioma.
Selective knockdown of either ROCK1 or ROCK2 exerted antidromic effects on glioma migration: while ROCK1 deletion altered the substrate-dependent migration, deletion of ROCK2 did not.
Nine novel functional miRNAs (hsa-miR-129, -136, -145, -155, -181b, -342-5p, -342-3p, -376a/b) in GBM cell lines were validated for their importance in glioma cell growth, and similar effects for six target genes (ROCK1, RHOA, MET, CSF1R, EIF2AK1, FGF7) of these miRNAs were shown functionally.