ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Drug Discov.

Sec. Anti-Cancer Drugs

Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fddsv.2025.1584801

This article is part of the Research TopicTargeting Cancer Metabolic Reprogramming for Cancer TherapyView all 4 articles

Dual upregulation of miRNA-143 and miRNA-506 in non-small cell lung cancer inhibits proliferation, motility, migration, and tumor growth

Provisionally accepted
  • 1University of Louisiana at Monroe, Monroe, United States
  • 2Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
  • 3University of Patras, Patras, Western Greece, Greece

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Lung cancer (LC) is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide and is primarily treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The role of microRNAs (miRs) is increasingly studied in cancer therapeutics, as miRs can regulate multiple cancer-related pathways simultaneously. While numerous miRs are individually explored for LC therapy, research on therapeutic miR combinations is limited. Our work here evaluates the stable deregulation of two miRs, miR-143-3p, and miR-506-3p, individually and in combination, to elucidate their roles upon prolonged exposure in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines. Following stable transductions using lentiviruses in A549 and H1975 cells, we evaluated cell cycle distribution, proliferation, migration, and in vivo tumor growth. Sustained combined upregulation of miR-143-3p and miR-506-3p demonstrated a miR-expression dependent response, with advantageous responses for regulating tumor progression. The dual miR upregulation increased the G2 phase cell population and decreased cell proliferation, motility, migration, and colony formation. Furthermore, the dual upregulation significantly inhibited tumor growth in vivo compared to the respective dual downregulation, in contrast to the individual miR deregulations. Our study highlights the advantages of investigating combinatorial miRs for cancer treatment, particularly miR-143/506 against LC.

Keywords: microRNA, lung cancer, lentiviral delivery, microRNA-143, MicroRNA-506, dual microRNA therapy

Received: 27 Feb 2025; Accepted: 16 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Shrestha, Haque, Shrestha, Lamprou, Jois, Mikelis and Mattheolabakis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: George Mattheolabakis, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Monroe, United States

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