MicroRNA-200a suppresses metastatic potential of side population cells in human hepatocellular carcinoma by decreasing ZEB2

// Xisheng Yang 1,* , Jianlin Wang 1,* , Shibin Qu 1,* , Hongtao Zhang 1 , Bai Ruan 1 , Yuan Gao 1 , Ben Ma 1 , Xing Wang 1 , Nan Wu 1 , Xiaolei Li 1 , Kefeng Dou 1 and Haimin Li 1 1 Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The Xijing Hospital of The Fourth Military Medical Uiversity, Xi’an, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Haimin Li, email: // Keywords : MicroRNAs, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Side population, Metastasis Received : November 22, 2014 Accepted : February 01, 2015 Published : March 08, 2015 Abstract Although microRNA-200a (miR-200a) is frequently downregulated in cancer, its role in side population (SP) has not been investigated. In this study, 101 pairs of primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues and matched normal control tissues were analyzed for miR-200a expression and its clinicopathological value was determined. We found that miR-200a was downregulated in HCC/SP and this was associated metastasis. MiR-200a suppressed metastasis of SP cells. Overexpression of miR-200a in SP cells decreased metastasis-related markers and expression of ZEB2. The associations between miR-200a, SP cells and ZEB2 were validated in HCC. These findings reveal that miR-200a suppresses metastasis of SP cells by downregulating ZEB2.