MicroRNA-221 accelerates the proliferation of laryngeal cancer cell line Hep-2 by suppressing Apaf-1

• DOI: 10.3892/or.2015.3714
• Publication Date: 2015-01-13T09:12:21Z
• Authors: XIN SUN; BIN LIU; XU-DONG ZHAO; LI-YIN WANG; WEN-YUE JI
• Keywords: Male; 0301 basic medicine; Caspase 8; Binding Sites; Caspase 3; Transplantation, Heterologous; Down-Regulation; Mice, Nude; Apoptosis; Caspase 9; 3. Good health; Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; Mice; MicroRNAs; 03 medical and health sciences; Apoptotic Protease-Activating Factor 1; Cell Line, Tumor; Animals; Humans; Laryngeal Neoplasms; Cyclin-Dependent Kinase Inhibitor p27; Neoplasm Transplantation; Cell Proliferation

Laryngeal cancer is one of the most commonly occurring malignant cancers of the head and neck region. In the present study, we investigated the roles of miR-221 in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma cell line, Hep-2. We examined the function and mechanism of miR-221 in Hep-2 cells using techniques of cell biology and molecular pathology, such as western blotting, quantitative PCR, immunohistochemical staining and flow cytometry. Using a luciferase assay, the apoptotic protease activating factor-1 (Apaf-1) mRNA 3'-UTR was shown to have complementary binding sites using bioinformatics prediction software including TargetScan, PicTar and miRanda. In conclusion, our results showed that miR-221 inhibition caused elevated expression levels of the Apaf-1 apoptotic pathway proteins caspase-3, -8 and -9. miR-221 may therefore be used as a novel therapeutic target for laryngeal cancer.