MicroRNA (miR)-211 loss promotes metabolic vulnerability and BRAF inhibitor sensitivity in melanoma

We report that miR-211 loss-of-function in the pigmented melanoma cell line SKMEL-28 slowed growth and invasion in vitro, inhibited phosphoinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) signaling, rendered these melanoma cells metabolically vulnerable by attenuating mitochondrial respiration and tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycling and inhibited melanoma growth in vivo. Overall design: mRNA profiles of SKMEL28 (WT) and SK-P8-2(miR-211 deletion) cells and xenografts in SCID mice were generated by deep sequencing using Illumina HiSeq 2500.