Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 13 pp 13647—13667
MiR-146b-5p suppresses the malignancy of GSC/MSC fusion cells by targeting SMARCA5
- 1 Department of Neurosurgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China
- 2 Department of Neurosurgery, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
- 3 Department of Neurosurgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
Received: January 19, 2020 Accepted: May 25, 2020 Published: July 6, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103489How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Wang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Recent studies have confirmed that both cancer-associated bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs, MSCs) and glioma stem-like cells (GSCs) contribute to malignant progression of gliomas through their mutual interactions within the tumor microenvironment. However, the exact ways and relevant mechanisms involved in the actions of GSCs and MSCs within the glioma microenvironment are not fully understood. Using a dual-color fluorescence tracing model, our studies revealed that GSCs are able to spontaneously fuse with MSCs, yielding GSC/MSC fusion cells, which exhibited markedly enhanced proliferation and invasiveness. MiR-146b-5p was downregulated in the GSC/MSC fusion cells, and its overexpression suppressed proliferation, migration and invasion by the fusion cells. SMARCA5, which is highly expressed in high-grade gliomas, was a direct downstream target of miR-146b-5p in the GSC/MSC fusion cells. miR-146b-5p inhibited SMARCA5 expression and inactivated a TGF-β pathway, thereby decreasing GSC/MSC fusion cell proliferation, migration and invasion. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that miR-146b-5p suppresses the malignant phenotype of GSC/MSC fusion cells in the glioma microenvironment by targeting a SMARCA5-regulated TGF-β pathway.