Transcriptomic identification of miR-205 target genes potentially involved in metastasis and survival of cutaneous malignant melanoma

Cutaneous melanoma is an aggressive neoplasm and is responsible for the majority of skin cancer deaths. Several miRNAs are involved in melanoma tumor progression. One of them is miR-205, the loss of which contributes to the development of melanoma metastasis. We evaluated whole-genome mRNA expression profiling associated with different miR-205 expression levels in melanoma cells. Differential expression analysis identified 243 differentially expressed transcripts including inositol polyphosphate 5'-phosphatase-like protein-1 (INPPL1) and BTB/POZ Domain-Containing Protein 3 (BTBD3). INPPL1 and BTBD3 were downregulated when melanoma cells expressed miR-205, indicating that these genes are potential miR-205 targets. Additionally, the target prediction algorithm TargetScan revealed that INPPL1 and BTBD3 genes had predicted target sites of miR-205 in their 3'UTRs and functional analysis demonstrated that these genes were directly linked to miR-205. Interestingly, our clinical data showed that INPPL1 was significantly associated with lymph node metastasis-free survival (LNMFS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) and melanoma specific survival (MSS). This study supports INPPL1 as a miR-205 target gene and, therefore, that the involvement of miR-205 in the metastatic dissemination of malignant melanoma is, at least in part, via INPPL1.