Gene expression profiling in prostate cancer cell lines transfected with miR-33a

In this study, we aimed to investigate the functional roles of miR-33a in PCa.We investigated the relative miR-33a level in normal and tumor prostate samples as well as PCa cell lines. Then, we performed a detailed functional analysis of mir-33a in LNCaP and VCaP PCa cells and evaluated proliferative, invasive and anchorage independent growth potential of cells upon overexpression and knockdown of miR-33a. We next explored the potential direct targets of miR-33a in PCa cells via utilizing gene expression microarray analysis, bioinformatics search, further qRT-PCR, western blot, and luciferase assay confirmation. Our results demonstrated that miR-33a is significantly downregulated in PCa tumor samples and PCa cell lines, pointing its tumor suppressor potential in PCa. Overexpression and knockdown of miR-33a significantly altered the proliferative, invasive and anchorage independent growth potentials of cells through altering the expression of its direct target PIM1. Ectopic induction of MiR-33a expression reversed the impacts of PIM1 overexpression on cellular phenotypes associated with PCa progression. Our results suggest that mir-33a exerts its tumor suppressor potential through targeting its direct target PIM1 and carries crucial roles in PCa tumorigenesis. Two cell lines, LNCaP and VCaP, with or without forced expression of miR-33a Multiple group comparison