Abstract 1978: Relationship between transcription factor TWIST1 and microRNA34a in metastatic cancer cells

Abstract

Background: Micro RNAs (miRNAs) are the important tools in RNA-interference (RNAi) technology, which is comparatively recent but one of the most promising bio-molecular tools for gene regulation. MiRNAs can interfere with certain genes in target specific manner, and they are being extensively investigated for cancer therapeutics. This study investigated the role of miR-34a on the expression of transcription factor TWIST1, which is involved in metastatic carcinomas.

Methods: The expression of miR34a and TWIST1 was measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysis in different cancer cell lines and breast cancer tissues. Then we have transfected the precursor and inhibitor of miR-34a into another TWIST1 rich 4T1 cancer cell, and isolated the total RNA and miRNAs for the analysis of TWIST1 expression, as well as miR-34a.

Results: Initially, we have observed that miR34a is highly expressed in lower invasive MCF7 and T47D cancer cells, whereas its expression in higher invasive MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-435 and BT-549 cancer cells is low. Oppositely, TWIST1 expression is relatively lower in MCF7 and T47D cells, but higher in MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-435 and BT-549 cells. This inverse relationship indicated that TWIST1 might be a target of miR-34a. Interestingly transfection of miR34a precursor inhibited TWIST1 expression in 4T1 cancer cells.

Conclusions: This study reports that miR-34a has reverse correlation with the high TWIST1 expression in metastatic breast cancer. Regulation of TWIST1 by miR-34a might be a potential tool in cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, especially for the treatment of metastatic cancers.

Funding support: This work was supported in part by the NSFC (81172049), the Science and Technology Innovation Team of Colleges and Universities of Sichuan Province (13TD0032), the Applied Basic Research Program of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (14JC0797,)and Luzhou City Special Foundation (2013LZLY-J10).Corresponding author email:fujunjiang@hotmail.com

Citation Format: Md. Asaduzzaman Khan, Mousumi Tania, Chunli Wei, Junjiang Fu. Relationship between transcription factor TWIST1 and microRNA34a in metastatic cancer cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1978. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1978