–Small Cell Lung Cancer

wnloade development of metastases is the main reason for cancer-related death in non–small cell lung cancer LC). The initiation of metastasis involves an increase in cell motility mediated by the loss of cell-cell on caused by E-cadherin repression, in a process commonly known as epithelial-to-mesenchymal transirole for microRNA-200 family members in regulating epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition has recently ndicated but data about their expression in lung tumors is still unavailable. The present study investigated pression of miR-200c in a panel of NSCLC cell lines (n = 9), and a strong inverse correlation with n was detected. Reintroduction of miR-200c into highly invasive/aggressive NSCLC cells induced a loss mesenchymal phenotype by restoring E-cadherin and reducing N-cadherin expression, and inhibited o cell invasion as well as in vivo metastasis formation. Moreover, miR-200c overexpression restored the vity of NCI-H1299 cells to cisplatin and cetuximab. Hypermethylation of the promoter region was found responsible for the loss of miR-200c in invasive cells, as evaluated by 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine treatment, lation-specific PCR, and bisulfite sequencing. In primary tumor specimens obtained from 69 patients onsecutively resected NSCLC, lower miR-200c expression levels were found to be associated with a poor of differentiation (P = 0.04), a higher propensity to lymph node metastases (P < 0.01), and with a lower erin expression (P = 0.01). These data indicate that the loss of miR-200c expression induces an aggresE-cadh sive, invasive, and chemoresistant phenotype, and that assessment of its expression could contribute to a better clinicopathologic definition of patients with NSCLC. Mol Cancer Res; 8(9); 1207–16. ©2010 AACR.