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microRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level and play important roles in tumor initiation and progression. Recently, we examined the global miRNA expression profile of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and demonstrated that miR-92a was highly expressed in tumor tissues. In this study, we found that the upregulation of miR-92a was significantly correlated with the status of lymph node metastasis and TNM stage in 107 ESCC patients. Moreover, the upregulation of miR-92a was associated with poor survival of ESCC patients and might be used as an independent prognostic factor. Next, we investigated the role and mechanism of miR-92a in ESCC cells, and found that miR-92a modulated the migration and invasion but not apoptosis and proliferation of ESCC cells in vitro. We further demonstrated that miR-92a directly targeted the CDH1 3′- UTR and repressed the expression of CDH1, a tumor metastasis suppressor. In addition, restoring of miR-92a-resistant CDH1 expression in miR-92a-overexpression cells recovered the pro-metastasis activity of miR-92a. Taken together, we demonstrated that miR-92a promotes ESCC cell migration and invasion at least partially via suppression of CDH1 expression, and patients with up-regulated miR-92a are prone to lymph node metastasis and thus have poor prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]