1. Academic Validation
  2. miR-155 increases stemness and decitabine resistance in triple-negative breast cancer cells by inhibiting TSPAN5

miR-155 increases stemness and decitabine resistance in triple-negative breast cancer cells by inhibiting TSPAN5

  • Mol Carcinog. 2020 Apr;59(4):447-461. doi: 10.1002/mc.23167.
La-Wei Yang 1 2 Xian-Jin Wu 1 3 Yi Liang 1 Guang-Qing Ye 1 Yu-Chuang Che 3 Xue-Zhen Wu 3 Xiao-Jie Zhu 3 Huo-Liang Fan 3 Xiang-Ping Fan 3 Jun-Fa Xu 4
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Clinical Research Center, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, China.
  • 2 Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
  • 3 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Huizhou Municipal Central Hospital, Huizhou, China.
  • 4 Department of Clinical Immunology, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, China.
Abstract

Effective therapeutic targets for triple-negative breast Cancer (TNBC), a special type of breast Cancer (BC) with rapid metastasis and poor prognosis, are lacking, especially for patients with chemotherapy resistance. Decitabine (DCA) is a Food and Drug Administration-approved DNA Methyltransferase Inhibitor that has been proven effective for the treatment of tumors. However, its antitumor effect in Cancer cells is limited by multidrug resistance. Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs), which are thought to act as seeds during tumor formation, regulate tumorigenesis, metastasis, and drug resistance through complex signaling. Our previous study found that miR-155 is upregulated in BC, but whether and how miR-155 regulates DCA resistance is unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that miR-155 was upregulated in CD24- CD44+ BC stem cells (BCSCs). In addition, the overexpression of miR-155 increased the number of CD24- CD44+ CSCs, DCA resistance and tumor clone formation in MDA-231 and BT-549 BC cells, and knockdown of miR-155 inhibited DCA resistance and stemness in BCSCs in vitro. Moreover, miR-155 induced stemness and DCA resistance by inhibiting the direct target gene tetraspanin-5 (TSPAN5). We further confirmed that overexpression of TSPAN5 abrogated the effect of miR-155 in promoting stemness and DCA resistance in BC cells. Our data show that miR-155 increases stemness and DCA resistance in BC cells by targeting TSPAN5. These data provide a therapeutic strategy and mechanistic basis for future possible clinical applications targeting the miR-155/TSPAN5 signaling axis in the treatment of TNBC.

Keywords

breast cancer stem cells; decitabine resistance; miR-155; tetraspanin-5.

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