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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 14|pp 14978—14989

Inhibition of miRNA-152-3p enhances diabetic wound repair via upregulation of PTEN

Yan Xu1, Tao Yu2, Lei He1, Liu Ouyang1, Yanzhen Qu1, Junjie Zhou3, Yu Han4, Deyu Duan1
  • 1Department of Orthopedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China
  • 2Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200065, China
  • 3Department of Pathology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China
  • 4Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Orthopedic Implants, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200011, China
* Equal contribution
Received: March 20, 2020Accepted: June 4, 2020Published: July 3, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103557

Copyright: © 2020 Xu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) is a major complication of diabetes in the elderly population. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential mechanism of DFU at the molecular level and explore a feasible therapy for it. Using data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, we found that phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) is differentially expressed between diabetic patients and those without diabetes. We also found that PTEN expression is regulated by glucose stimulation. In addition, decreased function of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) was found to be associated with reduction of PTEN. We identified microRNA-152-3p (miR-152-3p) to be a putative upstream negative regulator of PTEN, and in vivo and in vitro results indicated that miR-152-3p antagonist could restore HUVEC function and accelerate wound repair. Thus, miR-152-3p-induced downregulation of PTEN appears responsible for the delayed wound healing in DFU, and miR-152-3p inhibition may effectively accelerate wound repair, thereby providing a potential target for DFU therapy.