The Clinicopathological Significance of miR-133a in Colorectal Cancer

Abstract EN

This study determined the expression of microRNA-133a (MiR-133a) in colorectal cancer (CRC) and adjacent normal mucosa samples and evaluated its clinicopathological role in CRC.

The expression of miR-133a in 125 pairs of tissue samples was analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and correlated with patient’s clinicopathological data by statistical analysis.

Endogenous expression levels of several potential target genes were determined by qRT-PCR and correlated using Pearson’s method.

MiR-133a was downregulated in 83.2% of tumors compared to normal mucosal tissue.

Higher miR-133a expression in tumor tissues was associated with development of distant metastasis, advanced Dukes and TNM staging, and poor survival.

The unfavorable prognosis of higher miR-133a expression was accompanied by dysregulation of potential miR-133a target genes, LIM and SH3 domain protein 1 (LASP1), Caveolin-1 (CAV1), and Fascin-1 (FSCN1).

LASP1 was found to possess a negative correlation (γ=-0.23), whereas CAV1 exhibited a significant positive correlation (γ=0.27), and a stronger correlation was found in patients who developed distant metastases (γ=0.42).

In addition, a negative correlation of FSCN1 was only found in nonmetastatic patients.

In conclusion, miR-133a was downregulated in CRC tissues, but its higher expression correlated with adverse clinical characteristics and poor prognosis.