Moreover, its expression level in SLHCC was comparable to SHCC, but much higher

than that in NHCC. Interestingly, miR-140-5p expression was significantly correlated with multiple nodules, vein invasion, capsular formation, differentiation, overall survival, and disease-free survival of HCC. Given that miR-140-5p was down-regulated in HCC tissues and liver cancer cell lines, we speculated that up-regulation Idasanutlin clinical trial of miR-140-5p might suppress the malignant phenotypes of HCC cells. The results derived from in vitro cell proliferation, colony formation, migration, invasion assays, and in vivo tumor formation and metastasis assays confirmed that ectopic miR-140-5p expression suppresses the potency of HCC cell proliferation and metastasis. Altogether, the suppressive effects of miR-140-5p on HCC cell growth and metastasis might contribute to a good prognosis of HCC patients with higher expression of miR-140-5p. Our findings also suggest that miR-140-5p could potentially be used as a biomarker to clinically predict metastasis, recurrence, and survival prognosis for patients with HCC. The fundamental function of miRNAs is to regulate their target genes by direct cleavage of the mRNA and/or by inhibition selleck kinase inhibitor of protein synthesis, according to the degree of complementarity with the target mRNA 3′-UTR.27 Multipathway reporter array is a newly

technology to help us find the potential miRNA-regulated cancer signaling pathway.28 Our studies revealed that miR-140-5p suppresses the expression of TGF-β and the MAPK/ERK signaling Thalidomide pathway. Computational algorithms have been the major driving force in predicting miRNA targets, which are based mainly on base pairing of miRNAs and target gene 3′-UTRs.29 To explore the molecular mechanism underlying miR-140-5p function, we searched for its direct target genes using bioinformatic analysis of miRNA-mRNA 3′-UTR matching and found that TGFBR1 and FGF9 had a putative

miR-140-5p binding site within their 3′-UTR. Interestingly, these two genes were related to TGF-β and the MAPK/ERK signaling pathway, respectively. Several pieces of evidence in our study also indicate that TGFBR1 and FGF9 are direct target genes of miR-140-5p in HCC. First, overexpression of miR-140-5p significantly reduced the activity of a luciferase reporter containing the 3′-UTR sequence of TGFBR1 and FGF9; second, reintroduction of TGFBR1 and FGF9 could partly abolish the effect of miR-140-5p on HCC; and third, TGFBR1 and FGF9 protein expression were posttranscriptionally down-regulated by overexpression of miR-140-5p. Pais et al.30 identified Smad3 as an miR-140 target regulated only at the protein level by using a novel methodology based on computational analysis of promoter sequences combined with mRNA microarray experiments. Then they validated Smad3 as a target of miR-140 by luciferase reporter assay and western blot assay.