MicroRNA (miRNA)-153 (miR-153) has been considered as a novel tumor-related miRNA and is found to be significantly deregulated in human cancers. In this study, we found that the expression levels of miR-153 were obviously lower in gastric cancer tissues than those in matched adjacent nontumor tissues. Otherwise, miR-153 was expressed at significantly lower levels in aggressive tumor tissues. Clinical association analysis indicated that low expression of miR-153 was prominently correlated with poor prognostic features in gastric cancer. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the low expression of miR-153 was correlated with short 5-year survival of gastric cancer patients. Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that miR-153 was an independent prognostic marker in gastric cancer. Our in vitro studies showed that upregulation of miR-153 reduced cell migration and invasion in MKN-45 cells. Meanwhile, downregulation of miR-153 promoted SGC-7901 cell migration and invasion. An inverse correlation between miR-153 and SNAI1 expression was observed in gastric cancer tissues. In addition, upregulation of miR-153 reduced SNAI1 expression and subsequently suppressed epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) with elevated expression of E-cadherin and reduced expression of vimentin in MKN-45 cells. Furthermore, downregulation of miR-153 increased SNAI1 expression and promoted EMT in SGC-7901 cells. In conclusion, miR-153 is an independent prognostic marker for predicting survival of gastric cancer patients and may promote gastric cancer cell migration and invasion, by inhibiting SNAI1-induced EMT.
Keywords: EMT; SNAI1; miR-153; prognosis; tumor metastasis.