MiR-195 suppresses non-small cell lung cancer by targeting CHEK1

Abstract

// Ben Liu 1, * , Jinli Qu 1, * , Fangxiu Xu 1 , Yan Guo 1 , Yu Wang 1 , Herbert Yu 2 , Biyun Qian 1, 3 1 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Tianjin, National Clinical Research Center of Cancer, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin 300060, China 2 Cancer Epidemiology Program, University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA 3 Hongqiao International Institute of Medicine, Shanghai Tongren Hospital and Faculty of Public Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200025, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Biyun Qian, e-mail: qianbiyun@shsmu.edu.cn Keywords: non-small cell lung cancer, miR -195, CHEK1, prognosis, cell cycle Received: December 08, 2014      Accepted: January 31, 2015      Published: March 25, 2015 ABSTRACT MiR-195 suppresses tumor growth and is associated with better survival outcomes in several malignancies including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Our previous study showed high miR-195 plasma levels associated with favorable overall survival of non-smoking women with lung adenocarcinoma. To further elucidate role of miR-195 in NSCLC, we conducted in vitro experiment as well as clinical studies in a cohort of 299 NSCLC samples. We demonstrated that miR-195 expression was lower in tumor tissues and was associated with poor survival outcome. Overexpression of miR-195 suppressed tumor cell growth, migration and invasion. We discovered that CHEK1 was a direct target of miR-195, which decreased CHEK1 expression in lung cancer cells. High expression of CHEK1 in lung tumors was associated with poor overall survival. Our results suggest that miR-195 suppresses NSCLC and predicts lung cancer prognosis.