MicroRNA-141-3p promotes glioma cell growth and temozolomide resistance by directly targeting p53

// Xu Zhou 1, * , Weining Wu 1, * , Ailiang Zeng 1 , Er Nie 1 , Xin Jin 1 , Tianfu Yu 1 , Tongle Zhi 1 , Kuan Jiang 1 , Yingyi Wang 1 , Junxia Zhang 1 and Yongping You 1 1 Department of Neurosurgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210000, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Yongping You, email: yypl9@njmu.edu.cn Keywords: glioblastoma, proliferation, TMZ resistance, microRNA, p53 Abbreviations: GBM, glioblastoma multiforme; miRNAs, microRNAs; TMZ, temozolomide; CCK-8, Cell Counting Kit-8; EdU, 5-ethynyl-2′-deoxyuridine Received: February 18, 2017 Accepted: July 29, 2017 Published: August 24, 2017 ABSTRACT Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common primary malignancy in the brain and confers a uniformly poor prognosis. MicroRNAs have been shown to activate or inhibit tumorigenesis. Abnormalities in the p53 signaling pathway are found in various cancers and correlate with tumor formation. We examined the expression of microRNA-141-3p (miR-141-3p) in glioma of different grades by analysis of expression profiling databases and clinical specimens. Cell proliferation and flow cytometry assays were performed to evaluate the promotion of miR-141-3p in proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, and temozolomide resistance of glioblastoma cells in vitro . Bioinformatics analyses, luciferase reporter assays, and immunoblotting showed that p53 is a target gene of miR-141-3p. A significant inverse correlation was observed between expression of miR-141-3p and p53 in glioma and normal brain tissues (R 2 =0.506, P