miR-137 suppresses the invasion and procedure of EMT of human breast cancer cell line MCF-7 through targeting CtBP1.

Distant metastasis is the predominant site of gastric cancer recurrence and the most common cause of death. Recently, accumulating evidence has established that aberrant epithelial-mesenchymal transition activation plays a crucial role in the genesis, invasion, and metastasis of various cancers, including breast cancer. In this paper, we found that miR-137, which has been reported to function as a tumor suppressor in a variety of cancers, could significantly suppress the migration and invasion of MCF-7 cells, which might be correlated with its suppressive effects on the EMT procedure. Upon transfection, the epithelial marker, E-cadherin, was up-regulated, and the mesenchymal markers, N-cadherin and Vimentin, were suppressed. Moreover, we also found that carboxyl-terminal binding protein 1 (CtBP1) was a putative target gene of miR-137 in MCF-7 cells, and might be involved in the suppressive effects, which might provide novel diagnostic and therapeutic options for human breast cancer in the future.