The Intermediate Filament Vimentin Mediates MicroRNA MiR-378 Function in Cellular Self-renewal by Regulating the Expression of the Sox2 Transcription Factor

Overview

Journal J Biol Chem

Specialty Biochemistry

Date 2012 Nov 9

PMID 23135265

Citations 33

Authors

Zhaoqun Deng

William W Du

Ling Fang

Sze Wan Shan

Jun Qian

Jiang Lin

Wei Qian

Jichun Ma

Zina Jeyapalan Rutnam

Burton B Yang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

MicroRNAs are short noncoding RNAs that are implicated in cell self- renewal and cancer development. We show that miR-378 is up-regulated in human cancers and found that tumor cells transfected with miR-378 acquired properties of tumor stem cells, including cell self-renewal. Overexpression of miR-378 enhanced cell survival and colony formation. Isolated from a single-cell colony, the miR-378-expressing cells formed tumors in nude mice at low cell densities. These cells expressed higher levels of miR-378 and formed more and larger spheres and colonies. We found that the miR-378-expressing cells contained a large number of side population cells and could undergo differentiation. Cells transfected with miR-378 expressed increased levels of Sox2. Expression of miR-378 and Sox2 was found correlated significantly in cancer cell lines and in cancer patient specimens. We also observed opposite levels of vimentin in the cancer cell lines and human breast carcinoma specimens. We further demonstrated that vimentin is a target of miR-378, and ectopic transfection of vimentin inhibited Sox2 expression, resulting in decreased cell survival. Silencing vimentin promoted Sox2 expression and cell survival. Our study demonstrates that miR-378 is a regulator of stem cell marker Sox2 by targeting vimentin, which may serve as a new tool in studying the role of stem cells in tumorigenesis.

Citing Articles

Prognostic significance of miR-378 in cancers: a meta-analysis.

Shi L, Wei J, Shen Y, Zhang X, Li L, Deng Y BMC Cancer. 2025; 25(1):428.

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Vimentin Inhibits Neuronal Apoptosis After Spinal Cord Injury by Enhancing Autophagy.

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Cancer, metastasis, and the epigenome.

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miRNA-378 Is Downregulated by XBP1 and Inhibits Growth and Migration of Luminal Breast Cancer Cells.

Arabkari V, Barua D, Hossain M, Webber M, Smith T, Gupta A Int J Mol Sci. 2024; 25(1).

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Depicting the Implication of miR-378a in Cancers.

Qin Y, Liang R, Lu P, Lai L, Zhu X Technol Cancer Res Treat. 2022; 21:15330338221134385.

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