Curcumin exerted inhibitory effects on undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma by inhibiting the expression of miR-125a-5p

Curcumin suppressed proliferation, migration, invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis and induced apoptosis by regulating multiple signaling pathways and miRNAs in a wide variety of human malignancies. miRNAs play crucial roles in various steps of carcinogenesis in NPC, thus miRNAs could serve as critical therapeutic targets for NPC treatment. Curcumin could provide a novel strategy to block or introduce specific miRNAs for miRNA-based gene therapies. Nevertheless, there are no reports on the miRNAs regulated by curcumin in NPC yet. In the present study, we carried out a miRNA microarray to identify the miRNAs regulated by curcumin in NPC. Curcumin treatment down-regulated the expression of hsa-miR-125a-5p, hsa-miR-574-3p and hsa-miR-210 by miRNA microarray analysis and qPCR. Forced expression of miR-125a-5p enhanced proliferation, migration and invasion of HONE1 cells. Primary NPC exhibited a significantly higher expression level of miR-125a-5p in comparison with healthy controls. miR-125a-5p inhibited the expression of TP53 and curcumin treatment up-regulated the expression of TP53. Taken together, these results indicated that curcumin exerted inhibitory effects on NPC by inhibiting the expression of miR-125a-5p and subsequently enhancing the expression of TP53. Curcumin could provide a novel strategy to block miR-125a-5p for miRNA-based gene therapies in NPC.

Source: Clinical Science - June 4, 2014 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: W Gao, J Chan, T Wong Source Type: research