mir-490-5p functions as an oncomir in breast cancer by targeting nfatc4

Breast cancer is a serious health problem worldwide in women. micrornas are small non-coding rnas of 18–25 nucleotides in length that posttranscriptionally modulate gene expression. mir-490 has been reported as a tumor suppressor and oncomir microrna in breast cancer with two separate targets, nfat and rho. nfat is one of the targets for mir-490 but the relationship between hsa-mir-490 and nfatc3, nfatc4 are not clear yet. except for nfat5, the other members of nfat are activated by ca2+ influx in the cell, either via the plc-γ pathway or via store-operated ca2+ entry, typically in t lymphoid cells. in a cross-sectional comparative study, peripheral blood samples were collected from 30 subjects with breast cancer and 30 healthy individuals as a control group. gene expression analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (pbmcs) was performed using reverse transcriptionquantitative polymerase chain reaction (rt-qpcr) to study the nfatc3, nfatc4, and hsa-mir-490-5p gene expression alterations. as per the obtained results, a significant decrease was observed in the expression level of nfatc4 (p<0.05), while hsa-mir-490-5p expression found to be elevated in pbmcs of breast cancer patient (p<0.05). expression changes were not significant for nfatc3 gene (p>0.05). taken together findings of this study indicated that serum hsa-mir-490-5p acts as an oncomir by direct targeting the nfatc4.