Finding miRNA targeting PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway in human breast cancer cells

Background: breast cancer is the first common cancer among women worldwide. One of the major signaling pathways playing a role in the onset and progression of the disease is PI3K/Akt/mTOR, which is inhibited by PTEN. miRNAs are small non-coding molecules that regulate the expression of their targets by inhibition or suppression, and thus their dysregulated expression results in the development of cancer. Materials and methods: using various software applications predicting miRNAs, miR-144 was selected as the inhibitor of PTEN. The expression of miR-144 and PTEN has been evaluated by GEO microarray data, GSE57515 and GSE60716 in breast cancer cell lines and patient samples respectively. Results: PTEN and miR-144 expression analysis showed decreased levels of PTEN in patient samples and increased levels of miR-144 in breast cancer cell lines Conclusion: The results showed that the expression of PTEN and miR-144 was inversely correlated in more breast cancer metastatic cell lines indicating inhibitory effects of miR-144 on PTEN. Therefore, miR- 144 can probably be used in invasive and metastatic cancers as a biomarker either alone or in conjunctionwith other markers.

Keywords:

breast cancer , PTEN , miR-144