MiR-212 promotes pancreatic cancer cell growth and invasion by targeting the hedgehog signaling pathway receptor patched-1

Background: micrornas (mirnas) are a class of small non-coding rnas that play important roles in carcinogenesis. in the present study,we investigated the effect of mir-212 on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (pdac) and its target protein. methods. quantitative real-time pcr(qrt-pcr) was performed to detect the expression of mir-212 in pdac tissues and pancreatic cancer cell lines. mir-212 mimic,mir-212 inhibitor and negative control were transfected into pancreatic cancer cells and the effect of mir-212 up-regulation and down-regulation on the proliferation,migration and invasion of cells were investigated. furthermore,the mrna and protein levels of patched-1(ptch1) were measured. meanwhile,luciferase assays were performed to validate ptch1 as mir-212 target in pdac. results: mir-212 was up-regulated in pdac tissues and cells.using both gain-of function and loss-of function experiments,a pro-oncogenic function of mir-212 was demonstrated in pdac. moreover,up-regulated of ptch1 could attenuate the effect induced by mir-212. conclusion: these data suggest that mir-212 could facilitate pdac progression and metastasis through targeting ptch1,implicating a novel mechanism for the progression of pdac. © 2014ma et al.; licensee biomed central ltd.