The real time PCR results showed that miR-21 was differentially expressed in the serum of HCC patients and healthy volunteers. miR-21 and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) together could be potentially used as HCC diagnostic marker in Guangdong province population in China.
In E-HCC patients, serum exosomal miR-21 and miR-10b levels were associated with advanced tumor stage and HIF-1α and HIF-2α expression and were independent prognostic factors for disease-free survival of E-HCC patients.
CASE up-regulated miR-145 while down-regulated miR-21 expression in both rats with DEN-induced HCC and TGF-β<sub>1</sub>-stimulated HepG2 cells; CASE inhibited cell migration, proliferation and tumor growth while facilitated cell apoptosis in TGF-β<sub>1</sub>-stimulated HepG2 cells and xenografts of nude mice with miR-145 antagomir/miR-21 agomir treatment via increasing miR-145 and facilitating miR-145 modulated pSmad3L→pSmad3C signaling switch while decreasing miR-21 and inhibiting miR-21 modulated MAPK-dependent Smad3L phosphorylation.
NG-R1 exerted anti-hepatoma activity through inactivation of the PI3K/Akt pathway by downregulating miR-21, contributing to further understanding of the anti-tumor activities of NG-R1 in HCC.
LncRNA SNHG1 contributes to sorafenib resistance by activating the Akt pathway and is positively regulated by miR-21 in hepatocellular carcinoma cells.
The circulating miR-130b and miR-21 can be used as potential tumor biomarkers to diagnose liver cancer, and the combined detection of serum miR-130b and miR-21 is superior to the diagnosis of HCC.
PTEN/TIMP3/PDCD4 downregulation was consistent with the targets of miR-21/181b/183 in the HCC liver, and the alteration of these target genes was restored by both GSE and sorafenib.
Further, the levels of miR-21 and miR-222 were increased in cirrhosis and HCC but were decreased in FNH and the expression of miR-17-5p, miR-18a, miR-195 and miR-210 was decreased in FNH as compared with cirrhosis and/or HCC.
Clinical data indicated that high level of serum exosomal miRNA-21 was correlated with greater activation of CAFs and higher vessel density in HCC patients.
We compared the expression of miR-21 targets in 377 patients with liver cancer from the data generated by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and found that mRNA levels of 402 miR-21 targets are altered in HCC.
MiRNA profiling and RT-qPCR confirm an inverse correlation between miR-122 and miR-21 in hepatocellular carcinoma tissues/cells, and increasing or decreasing nuclear level of miR-122 respectively reduces or increases miR-21 expression.
We demonstrated that Sphk2 gene silencing induced by nanoparticles in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells could reduce miRNA-21 sorting into exosomes, contributing to the inhibition of tumor cell migration and tumorigenic function of exosomes to normal liver cells.