• Chunyan Zhang, Lingxu Wang, Juanjuan Yang, Yin Fu, Hongzhi Li, Linsen Xie, and Yuanbo Cui.
• Department of Clinical Laboratory, Zhengzhou Central Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450007, China.
• Eur. J. Pharmacol. 2019 Oct 15; 861: 172590.

AbstractIncreasing evidence displays that microRNAs (miRNAs) participate in the development of various human malignancies, including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). MicroRNA-33a-5p (miR-33a-5p) has recently been reported to function as a tumor suppressor in many human cancers. However, the expression and role of miR-33a-5p in ESCC remains largely unknown. Herein, we discovered that miR-33a-5p was down-regulated in both ESCC tissues and cell lines, compared with their normal counterparts, and decreased expression of miR-33a-5p was found to be closely associated with poor patient prognosis of ESCC. Moreover, functional experiments revealed that up-regulation of miR-33a-5p inhibited cell proliferation and metastasis of ESCC cells. In addition, the expression level of miR-33a-5p was found to be negatively correlated with the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) differentiation antagonizing non-protein coding RNA (DANCR), in both ESCC tissues and cell lines. Furthermore, zinc-finger-enhancer binding protein 1 (ZEB1) was predicted and confirmed to be a direct target of miR-33a-5p in ESCC. Further mechanistic investigation indicated that DANCR may function as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to sponge miR-33a-5p, and thereby up-regulate ZEB1 expression in ESCC. This study highlights the functions of miR-33a-5p in the progression of ESCC and suggests that the DANCR/miR-33a-5p/ZEB1 axis may be a potential prognostic and therapeutic target.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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