Purpose: Breast cancer is the most common female tumor in the world. MicroRNA has been reported to play an important role in the progression of breast cancer. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of miR-937-3p in breast cancer.
Patients and methods: Expression of miR-937-3p in breast cancer tissues and serums was detected from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and patients’ samples. Kaplan–Meier plotter identified the association between miR-937-3p and prognosis.
Results: The analysis of TCGA, GEO and qRT-PCR suggested that the level of miR-937-3p was increased in breast cancer tissues and serum compared with adjacent normal breast tissues and healthy persons, respectively. The decreased expression of miR-937-3p inhibited breast cancer proliferation, migration and invasion. CCRL2 was the target of miR-937-3p. In contrast to miR-937-3p, the level of CCRL2 was decreased in breast cancer tissues. Luciferase reporter assay revealed that miR-937-3p directly bound to the 3ʹ-UTR of CCRL2. Double knockdown of CCRL2 and miR-937-3p promoted breast cancer cell proliferation, migration and invasion, suggesting that miR-937-3p promoted breast cancer cell proliferation, migration and invasion by targeting CCRL2. The Kaplan–Meier survival analysis suggested that breast cancer patients with high level of miR-937-3p or low level of CCRL2 had a reduced overall survival (OS).
Conclusion: miR-937-3p plays an important role in the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer. Inhibition of miR-937-3p expression may be a novel targeted therapy for breast cancer.
Keywords: miR-937-3p, breast cancer, proliferation, migration, invasion, prognosis