Clinical Significance of miR-575 in Ovarian Cancer and Its Effect on Ovarian Cancer Cells

Abstract

Ovarian cancer (OC) is a common form of gynecological cancer that increases in incidence annually, seriously threatening the health and safety of patients. The critical role of miR-575 in multiple neoplastic diseases has already been well established. We suspected that miRNA-575 may be strongly associated with the occurrence of OC and may be the key to OC diagnosis and treatment in the future. To test this hypothesis, we selected 68 OC patients (research group, or RG) who were admitted to our hospital and 60 concurrent healthy controls (control group, or CG) as the study participants. Human OC cell lines A2780, OVCAR-3, and SK-OV-3, and human normal ovarian epithelial cells IOSE80 were used in this study. Nanoparticle-assisted polymerase chain reaction (Nano-PCR), was used to identify miRNA-575 expression and its diagnostic implications in OC. miRNA-575 expression in OC cells and its influence on OC cell biological behaviors were investigated, and the correlation between miR-575 and the phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) was discussed. The results revealed a highly expressed miRNA-575 in OC. Detection of biological behaviors was conducted after transfection of miRNA-575 into OC cells. Cell proliferation and invasion in the mimics-miRNA-575 group was statistically enhanced compared to the negative control (NC) and ininhibition-miRNA-575 groups, and the apoptosis and apoptosis protein count significantly declined (P < 0.05). Subsequently, PTEN was observed to present a lower expression in OC cells. Online target gene analysis website (http://www.targetscan.org/vert_72/) identified the related sites that could bind miR-575 and PTEN. PTEN protein detection in the mimics-miR-575, ininhibition-miR-575, and NC groups showed that the PTEN protein expression in the mimics-miR-575 group was reduced in comparison with that of the other groups, while that for ininhibition-miR-575 was elevated compared to that of the NC group (P < 0.05). Therefore, we came to the conclusion that a high expression of miR-575 can bolster OC cell proliferation and invasion and inhibit apoptosis, while the impact of miR-575 on OC cells may be achieved via targeting the PTEN protein. miR-575 presents important clinical applications in OC diagnosis as an underlying therapeutic target of OC and is a major breakthrough toward future OC research.