title: MicroRNA-92a promotes metastasis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma by targeting the PTEN/AKT pathway.
abstract: MicroRNAs have been confirmed to be a group of important regulators during the pathogenesis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). This study confirmed that the expression of microRNA-92a (miR-92a) was significantly upregulated in NPC as compared to noncancerous nasopharyngeal epithelial tissues. Furthermore, high expression of miR-92a was observed in all NPC cell lines, especially in high metastatic cell lines. Clinical analysis indicated that high expression of miR-92a was associated with adverse clinicopathological features including the advanced tumor-node-metastasis stage and distant metastasis, and conferred poor prognosis of patients. In vitro assays showed that miR-92a overexpression potentiated the migration and invasion of 6-10B cells, and miR-92a silencing reduced the number of migrated and invaded 5-8F cells. Phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) was confirmed as a direct downstream target of miR-92a in NPC cells. Otherwise, alteration of miR-92a expression regulated PTEN/AKT pathway in NPC cells. Mechanistically, miR-92a exerted its promoting effects on the metastatic behaviors of NPC cells through suppressing PTEN/AKT pathway. Taken together, this study demonstrates that miR-92a is a promising prognostic biomarker for patients with NPC, and may be a potential therapeutic target to prevent the metastasis of NPC.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Medical College, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Haixiong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Medical College, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Medical College, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Dadao
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Kang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhu
keywords: PTEN; head and neck neoplasms; microRNA-92a; nasopharyngeal carcinoma; non-coding RNA; signaling pathway; tumor metastasis