miR-92b regulates glioma cells proliferation, migration, invasion, and apoptosis via PTEN/Akt signaling pathway

Abstract

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly invasive malignant primary brain tumor with neoplastic growth. Despite the progresses made in surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation in recent decade, the prognosis of patients with gliomas remains poor and the average survival time of patients suffering from glioblastoma is still short. As a potential therapy strategy, microRNAs have been considered as new targets for possible cancer treatment. In this study, we found that the miR-92b inhibitors (miR-92b-I) could inhibit the proliferation, migration, invasion, and promote the apoptosis of glioma cells. As a predicted target of miR-92b, phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), also elevated at both mRNA and protein levels. Moreover, the Akt phosphorylation was consistently inhibited. The rescue experiment with miR-92b and PTEN double knockdown resulted in partial reversion of miR-92b-I-induced phenotypes. Taken together, our findings indicated that miR-92b-I could restrain the proliferation, invasion, migration, and stimulate apoptosis of glioma cells by targeting PTEN/Akt signaling pathway. Further investigations will focus on antitumor effect of miR‑92b-I in glioma treatment.

Keywords: Akt; Carcinogenesis; Glioblastomas; PTEN; miR-92b.