Integrated Genomic and Functional microRNA Analysis Identifies miR-30-5p as a Tumor Suppressor and Potential Therapeutic Nanomedicine in Head and Neck Cancer

Purpose: To identify deregulated and inhibitory miRNAs and generate novel mimics for replacement nanomedicine for head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). Experimental Design: We integrated miRNA and mRNA expression, copy number variation, and DNA methylation results from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), with a functional genome-wide screen. Results: We reveal that the miR-30 family is commonly repressed, and all 5 members sharing these seed sequence similarly inhibit HNSCC proliferation in vitro. We uncover a previously unrecognized inverse relationship with overexpression of a network of important predicted target mRNAs deregulated in HNSCC, that includes key molecules involved in proliferation (EGFR, MET, IGF1R, IRS1, E2F7), differentiation (WNT7B, FZD2), adhesion, and invasion (ITGA6, SER-PINE1). Reexpression of the most differentially repressed family member, miR-30a-5p, suppressed this mRNA program, selected signaling proteins and pathways, and inhibited cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro. Furthermore, a novel miR-30a-5p mimic formulated into a targeted nanomedicine significantly inhibited HNSCC xenograft tumor growth and target growth receptors EGFR and MET in vivo. Significantly decreased miR-30a/e family expression was related to DNA promoter hypermethylation and/or copy loss in TCGA data, and clinically with decreased disease-specific survival in a validation dataset. Strikingly, decreased miR-30e-5p distinguished oropharyngeal HNSCC with poor prognosis in TCGA (P = 0.002) and validation (P = 0.007) datasets, identifying a novel candidate biomarker and target for this HNSCC subset. Conclusions: We identify the miR-30 family as an important regulator of signal networks and tumor suppressor in a subset of HNSCC patients, which may benefit from miRNA replacement nanomedicine therapy.

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