miR-1236 down-regulates alpha-fetoprotein, thus causing PTEN accumulation, which inhibits the PI3K/Akt pathway and malignant phenotype in hepatoma cells.

Rui Gao, Chunli Cai, Jiancheng Gan, Xi Yang, Zeyu Shuang, Min Liu, Shengping Li, Hua Tang

Index: Oncotarget 6(8) , 6014-28, (2015)

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Abstract

Alpha fetoprotein (AFP) is a clinical biomarker of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Here, we found that miR-1236 is down-regulated, whereas AFP is highly expressed in HCC tissues and cells. We demonstrated that miR-1236 directly targets the 3'UTR of AFP and down-regulates its expression. Also, miR-1236 inhibited and AFP stimulated proliferation, migration, invasion and vasculogenic mimicry (VM) of HCC. In agreement, AFP over-expression counteracted the inhibitory effect of miR-1236. We demonstrated that AFP promoted the ubiquitination of PTEN, thus decreasing PTEN levels, while miR-1236 inhibited the PI3K/Akt pathway.