Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 11|pp 3421—3437

miR-150-5p suppresses tumor progression by targeting VEGFA in colorectal cancer

Xiaoxiang Chen^1,², Xueni Xu^1,², Bei Pan¹, Kaixuan Zeng^1,², Mu Xu¹, Xiangxiang Liu¹, Bangshun He¹, Yuqin Pan¹, Huiling Sun¹, Shukui Wang¹

¹General Clinical Research Center, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210006, Jiangsu, China
²Medical College, Southeast University, Nanjing 210009, Jiangsu, China

Received: May 15, 2018Accepted: November 15, 2018Published: November 26, 2018

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101656

Copyright: © 2018 Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

MicroRNA-150-5p (miR-150-5p) has been implicated in tumor initiation and progression in a variety of cancers. However, its roles in colorectal cancer (CRC) remain largely unknown. In our study, a decreased miR-150-5p expression in CRC tissues was found to be associated with poor overall survival. Moreover, miR-150-5p inhibited CRC cell proliferation, migration, invasion and angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo, and its inhibitory effect could be reversed by transfection of vascular epithelial growth factor A (VEGFA) expression plasmid. Lastly, we demonstrated that miR-150-5p inactivated VEGFA/VEGFR2 and the downstream Akt/mTOR signaling pathway in CRC. Based on these results, we conclude that miR-150-5p may function as a tumor suppressor in CRC, and miR-150-5p/VEGFA axis may be a potential therapeutic target candidate in CRC treatment.