Aberrant expression of miR-20a and miR-203 in cervical cancer

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that are critical regulators of various diseases. MicroRNA- 20a (miR-20a) and microRNA-203 (miR-203) have previously shown significant alteration in a range of cancers. In this study, the expression levels of miR-20a and miR-203 in 100 cervical cancer tissues were detected by qRT-PCR and compared to patient matched-nontumor cervical tissues. Correlations between expression level and clinicopathologic characteristics of cervical cancer were also analyzed. Finally, we studied the effect of miR- 20a and miR-203 on cell proliferation in cervical cancer cell lines by MTT. We found that the expression level of miR-20a (P<0.001) was significantly higher in cervical cancer patients than in healthy controls, while that of miR-203 (P<0.001) was lower. Aberrant expression of miR-20a was correlated with lymph node metastasis (LNM), histological grade and tumor diameter, but down-regulated miR-203 was correlated with LNM only. Furthermore, we found that over-expression of miR-203 decreased cell proliferation, while reduction of miR- 20a also prevented tumor progression. Our results support the involvement of miR-20a and miR-203 in cervical tumorigenesis. We propose that miRNAs might be used as therapeutic agents for cervical cancer.