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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 11|pp 15538—15547

miR-34a inhibits melanoma growth by targeting ZEB1

Yazhen Xu1, Bingyu Guo1, Xiaoyan Liu1, Kai Tao1
  • 1Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery, General Hospital of Northern Theater Command, Shenyang, P.R. China
Received: December 14, 2020Accepted: May 13, 2021Published: June 8, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203114

Copyright: © 2021 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

Melanoma is a highly lethal cutaneous cancer with the tendency for early invasion and metastasis. Integrated miRNA transcriptome sequence analysis of human melanoma tumors and adjacent control tissues identified 17 miRNAs differentially expressed in melanoma tissues: let-7a-5p, let-7b-5p, let-7c, miR-374a-3p, miR-100-5p, miR-7, miR-195, miR-1908, miR-214, miR-221, miR-199a-5p, miR-21, miR-18, miR-34a, miR-199a-3p, miR-92a and miR-106b. Among these, miR-34a was most significantly down-regulated in melanoma tissues, and its expression correlated with TNM melanoma stage. miR-34a overexpression inhibited expression and activity of the transcription factor ZEB1, resulting in decreased proliferation and migration of melanoma cells. Moreover, miR-34a overexpression inhibited ZEB1 expression and melanoma tumor growth in vivo, in a melanoma nude mouse model. Together, these findings demonstrate that miR-34a inhibits melanoma growth by targeting the proto-oncogene ZEB1 and suggest the miR-34a -ZEB1 axis may serve as a novel target for melanoma treatment.