MicroRNA-802 promotes osteosarcoma cell proliferation by targeting p27.

MicroRNAs have been demonstrated to regulate proliferation and apoptosis in many types of cancers, but biological functions in osteosarcomas remain relatively unknown. Here, we found expression of miR-802 to be up-regulated in osteosarcoma tissues in comparison with adjacent normal tissues. Enforced expression of miR-802 was able to promote cell proliferation in U2OS and MG63 cells, while miR-802 antisense oligonucleotides (antisense miR-802) inhibited cell proliferation. At the molecular level, our results further revealed that expression of p27, a negative cell-cycle regulator, was negatively regulated by miR-802. Therefore, the data reported here indicate that miR-802 is an important regulator in osteosarcoma, our findings contributing to a better understanding of important mis-regulated miRNAs in this tumour type.