miR-1246 Targets CCNG2 to Enhance Cancer Stemness and Chemoresistance in Oral Carcinomas.

MiRNAs have been recognized as crucial components in carcinogenesis, but whether miR-1246 affects the cancer stemness and drug resistance in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) has not been fully understood and its downstream targets still need to be unraveled. In the present work, we employed miRNAs RT-PCR analysis to evaluate the expression of miR-1246 in tumor tissues and oral cancer stem cells (OCSC). Stemness phenotypes, including self-renewal, migration, invasion, colony formation capacities, and in vivo oncogenicity of oral cancer cells following transfected with miR-1246 inhibitors or mimics were examined. Our results suggested that the expression level of miR-1246 was significantly upregulated in the tumor tissues and OCSC. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of OSCC patients with high levels of miR-1246 had the worst survival rate compared to their low-expression counterparts. Inhibition of miR-1246 in OCSC significantly reduced the stemness hallmarks, while overexpression of miR-1246 enhanced these characteristics. Moreover, we showed that downregulation of miR-1246 decreased chemoresistance. In addition, we verified that miR-1246-inhibited CCNG2 contributed to the cancer stemness of OSCC. These results demonstrated the significance of miR-1246 in the regulation of OSCC stemness. Targeting miR-1246-CCNG2 axis may be beneficial to suppress cancer relapse and metastasis in OSCC patients.

1. Introduction

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), a subtype of head and neck cancer (HNC), is one of the most common neoplasms worldwide and a significant number of cases are in advanced stages at the time of detection [1]. According to the epidemiological data collected from GLOBOCAN, cancer of the lip and oral cavity accounted for 300,000 cases in 2012, with two-thirds occurring in men [2]. Also, locoregional recurrence and distant metastasis in patients with OSCC after surgery still remain prevalent, which lead to poor prognosis [3,4]. As such, it is imperative to elucidate the mechanism underlying the tumor progression and recurrence of OSCC. Over the past decades, the cancer stem cell (CSC) theory has been developed that a small population of cancer cells is endowed with tumor initiation and self-renewal properties [5]. In addition to initiating and propagating tumors, these cells are implicated in metastasis and chemoradioresistance [5]. Therefore, identifying the oncogenic factor that drives cancer stemness becomes extremely crucial.

Among various factors that regulate malignant phenotypes, micro RNAs (miRNAs) have gained enormous attention in recent years. MiRNAs are a type of non-coding RNA, consisting of 21–24 nucleotides in length, which function in the post-transcriptional regulation of a gene by binding to the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of target mRNAs [6]. An increasing number of miRNAs has been recognized to be aberrantly expressed in OSCC [7] and chemoresistant OSCC [8], suggesting their emerging roles in tumorigenesis and cancer relapse. Besides, miRNAs have been reported to serve as prognostic indicators of recurrence in patients with OSCC [9]. In particular, TP53 mutation-associated miRNAs have been used to predict clinical outcome of HNC patients [10] as TP53 is one of the most frequent genetic alterations in HNC [11]. Recently, miR-1246 has been identified as a novel target of p53 [12] and shown to enhance migration and invasion of hepatocellular carcinoma cells [13]. Current evidence has suggested that miR-1246 not only can act as an oncogene [14,15] but also function as a tumor suppressor [16] in different cancer types. It has been shown that miR-1246 could regulate the Wnt/β-catenin activation in liver CSCs [17]. In non-small cell lung cancer, it has been demonstrated that CSC-specific miR-1246 and miR-1290 converge to promote cancer progression [18], and are associated with stemness and invasiveness [19]. Moreover, treatment of miR-1246 mimic or its antisense inhibitor enhances the proliferation and radioresistance of lung cancer cells [20]. Serum miR-1246 also has been reported to function as a novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma [21]. In OSCC, several studies have revealed the oncogenic role of miR-1246. The expression of miR-1246 was found increased in OSCC tissues and high level of miR-1246 was associated with tumor grade [22]. Moreover, transferring miR-1246 to poorly metastatic cells by exosomes has been shown to promote cell motility of oral cancer cell line [23]. These data suggest that miR-1246 may contribute to cancer stemness in OSCC.

Hence, we sought to investigate the possible mechanism underlying the pathogenic role of miR-1246 in driving cancer stemness. First, we examined the expression of miR-1246 in tumor tissues and CSCs using three isolation methods in two oral cancer cell lines. We evaluated the phenotypic changes regarding stemness following inhibition or overexpression of miR-1246. Also, we correlated the expression of miR-1246 with stemness and drug resistance markers, and assessed the chemosensitivity after knockdown of miR-1246. Furthermore, we utilized the Target Scan program and luciferase assay to identify the CCNG2 as a direct target of miR-1246 and verified their contribution in driving stemness of OSCC.

2. Results

2.1. MiR-1246 Is Upregulated in Tumor Tissues and Putative Cancer Stem Cells, and Higher Expression of miR-1246 Is Associated with Poor Prognosis

To determine the relative expression of miR-1246 in oral carcinomas, the normal and tumor tissues were subjected to real-time qRT-PCR. As shown in Figure 1A, the expression level of miR-1246 in tumor tissues was upregulated. In associated with this result, a higher expression of miR-1246 was observed in the deceased patients compared to living ones using TCGA dataset (Figure 1B). Upregulated miR-1246 is correlated with poor survival outcome of OSCC patients (Figure 1C). As shown in Table 1, up-regulation of miR-1246 was highly correlated with T category, stage, and lymph node metastasis of OSCC (* p < 0.05). No significant difference in miR-1246 expression was observed with respect to other factors, such as age, sex, and differentiation status (p > 0.05). CD133+ [24], sphere-forming [25], and ALDH1+ [26] cells are considered oral cancer stem cells, and our results showed that the expression of miR-1246 was consistently increased in these cells (Figure 1D–F) using two oral cancer cell lines (SAS and GNM). These results suggested that the elevated expression of miR-1246 may be associated with cancer aggressiveness.

Figure 1

The expression of miR-1246 is upregulated in the oral cancer tissues and cancer stem cells. (A) Relative of miR-1246 expression in normal and OSCC tissues (n = 30 for each group) was examined by miRNAs RT-PCR analysis; (B) Copy-number value of miR-1246 was assessed by TCGA dataset; (C) An overall survival correlation analysis was performed for OSCC patient samples expressing different levels of miR-1246. Expression of miR-1246 in CD133+ (D), spheroid (E), and ALDH1+ (F) cells were evaluated by miRNAs RT-PCR analysis. Experiments were repeated three times and representative results were shown. Results are means ± SD of triplicate samples from three experiments. * p < 0.05.

Table 1

Correlation with miR-1246 expression and clinicopathological features. Statistic analysis using fisher’s exact test. * p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

miR-1246	High Expression	Low Expression	p-Value
Age
>54	26	9	0.657
≤54	24	21
Sex
Female	18	10	1.000
Male	32	20
T category
T1 + 2	18	22	0.024 *
T3 + 4	32	8
N category
N0	12	18	0.019 *
N1–2	38	12
Stage
I–II	14	20	0.01 **
III–IV	36	10
Differentiation
Well	21	16	0.36
Moderate or poor	29	14

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

2.2. MiR-1246 Regulates the Tumorigenicity In Vitro and In Vivo

Subsequently, we utilized the miR-1246 inhibitor to downregulate its expression (Figure 2A) in cancer cells followed by analyses of stemness phenotype. In both cancer cells, the self-renewal (Figure 2B), migration (Figure 2C), invasion (Figure 2D), and colony formation (Figure 2E) capacities were decreased in cells transfected with miR-1246 inhibitor. Moreover, the tumor size was significantly smaller in the mice received miR-1246 inhibitor-treated cells (Figure 2F).

Figure 2

Inhibition of miR-1246 downregulates the stemness phenotypes in OSCC. (A) Cells were transfected with miR-1246 inhibitors followed by an examination of the relative expression of miR-1246; (B) Self-renewal, (C) migration, (D) invasion, (E) colony formation properties were evaluated (100×); (F) Subcutaneous xenografts in mice was carried out to assess the in vivo tumorigenicity. Experiments were repeated three times and representative results were shown. Results are means ± SD of triplicate samples from three experiments. * p < 0.05.

We then examined the expression of cancer stemness markers. As expected, the relative ALDH1 expression was lower in oral cancer cells transfected with a miR-1246 inhibitor (Figure 3A). Sox2 has been shown to control tumor initiation and radiochemoresistance [27], and our result demonstrated that miR-1246 inhibitor reduced the expression of Sox2 (Figure 3B). Also, the frequency of CD44+ cells has been reported to be associated with tumor recurrence [28], and flow cytometry analysis showed that its activity was suppressed by transfection of miR-1246 inhibitor (Figure 3C). Besides, we observed that there was a positive correlation between miR-1246 and Sox2 (Figure 3D) as well as miR-1246 and ALDH1 (Figure 3E) in OSCC patients.

Figure 3

Downregulation of miR-1246 reduces the CSC markers in OSCC cells. (A) The ALDH1 expression was analyzed by flow cytometry and (B) the relative expression of Sox2 was examined by RT-PCR analysis; (C) Percentage of CD44+ cells were assessed by flow cytometry; Positive relationships between miR-1246 and stemness markers, Sox2 (D) and ALDH1 (E) were shown. * p < 0.05.

To further confirm that modulation of miR-1246 could enhance the oral oncogenicity, we transfected cancer cells (OC3 and FaDu) with miR-1246 mimics to upregulate its expression (Figure 4A). The number of spheres (Figure 4B), invasion (Figure 4C) and colony forming (Figure 4D) abilities were all increased in miR-1246 mimics-treated cells. In addition, miR-1246 mimics promoted the tumor growth in tumor-bearing mice (Figure 4E). Altogether, these data revealed that miR-1246 may regulate the oral cancer stemness.

Figure 4

Upregulation of miR-1246 enhances the stemness phenotypes in OSCC. (A) Cells were transfected with miR-1246 mimics or scramble control (Scr.) followed by an examination of the relative expression of miR-1246; (B) Self-renewal (100×), (C) invasion, (D) colony-forming capacities were assessed. (E) Subcutaneous xenograft in mice was carried out to assess the in vivo tumorigenicity. Experiments were repeated three times and representative results were shown. Results are means ± SD of triplicate samples from three experiments. * p < 0.05.

2.3. MiR-1246 Modulates Chemosensitivity of Oral Cancer

Given that miR-1246 contributed to the self-renewal and metastatic capacities in cancer cells, we sought to investigate whether inhibition of miR-1246 could reduce the chemoresistance, which was another characteristic of cancer stemness. The ABCG2 expression is commonly used to evaluate the drug resistance [29]. With miR-1246 inhibitor, cancer cells exhibited lower survival rate (Figure 5A) and ABCG2 expression (Figure 5B). Furthermore, cisplatin combined with a knockdown of miR-1246 inhibited the self-renewal (Figure 5C) and invasion (Figure 5D) abilities of cancer cells. Likewise, the TCGA database revealed that the higher expression of miR-1246 was associated with higher ABCG2 expression in OSCC patients (Figure 5E). These results showed that inhibition of miR-1246 possessed the chemosensitive property and reduced the hallmarks of CSC.

Figure 5

Downregulated miR-1246 increases the chemosensitivity of OSCC. (A) Cell survival following cisplatin treatment was determined by MTT assay; (B) The expression of drug resistance marker, ABCG2, was evaluated by flow cytometry; (C) Self-renewal and (D) invasion were examined following knockdown of miR-1246 with or without cisplatin; (E) The relationship between miR-1246 and ABCG2 was assessed by Pearson’s correlation. * p < 0.05.

2.4. MiR-1246 Enhances the Cancer Stemness via Repression of CCNG2

To predict the potential downstream gene, we utilized the Target Scan program and identified CCNG2 (Cyclin G2) may be a direct target of miR-1246. We constructed the reporter plasmids containing either full-length (wild-type) or mutated forms of the 3′UTR region of CCNG2 to verify it (Figure 6A). As shown in Figure 6B, the luciferase activity of reporter plasmids containing full-length CCNG2 3′UTR was downregulated, while the activity was not affected in the mutated form of CCNG2. In agreement with this finding, results of western blot showed that the expression of CCNG2 was inhibited in cancer cells treated with miR-1246 mimics (Figure 6C), and there was a negative correlation between CCNG2 and miR-1246 expression in OSCC patients (Figure 6D). In Figure 6E–G, the self-renewal, migration and colony formation capacities were repressed after inhibition of miR-1246, whereas silence of CCNG2 reversed these phenomena. Collectively, these data demonstrated that suppression of CCNG2 by miR-1246 was crucial to maintain the stemness in oral cancer.

Figure 6

Suppression of CCNG2 by miR-1246 contributes to oral cancer stemness. (A) Schematic presentation of the constructed CCGN2 3′UTR reporter plasmids. Wild-type and mutated (Mut) CCNG2 reporter plasmids were co-transfected with miR-1246 or empty vectors; (B) The luciferase activity of each combination was assessed and showed that only WT reporter activity was inhibited by miR-1246; (C) CCNG2 protein expression in OSCC lines was examined by western blotting; (D) The relationship between miR-1246 and CCNG2 expression was shown; (E) Self-renewal, (F) migration, (G) colony-formation capacities of cells transfected with miR-1246 inhibitor with or without silence of CCNG2 were evaluated. * p < 0.05 compared with control group; # p < 0.05 compared with miR-1246 inhibitor only group.

3. Discussion

One of the greatest impediments in improving the survival rates of OSCC patients after treatments is the existence of CSCs. Many efforts have been made to elucidate the major regulators of CSCs, and miRNAs have been emerged as important players in driving stemness. In the current study, we revealed that miR-1246 was tightly associated with the CSCs of OSCC. First, we demonstrated the expression of miR-1246 was significantly upregulated in CSCs and implicated in the disease outcome (Figure 1). Consistently, several studies have indicated that miR-1246 was linked to stemness and invasiveness in other cancers [17,19]. High miR-1246 expression was related to poor prognosis in OSCC [22], and lung cancer patients bearing tumors with higher miR-1246 expression have shorter survival periods [18]. Also, recent researches have indicated that circulating miR-1246 may function as plasma biomarkers for numerous cancers [18,30,31].

Next, we examined whether miR-1246 contributed to the CSCs behaviors. Our data showed that downregulation of miR-1246 reduced the phenotypes of stemness (Figure 2) and expression of CSC markers (Figure 3), indicating that loss of miR-1246 affected the tumor-initiating potential and their ability to metastasize. This phenomenon was also observed in other studies showing knockdown of miR-1246 impaired stemness properties and tumor growth in mice [17,18]. We found that the expression of miR-1246 was positively correlated with stemness markers, including ALDH1 and Sox2, and our previous work has shown that Sox2 expression involved in the oncogenicity and radiochemoresistance of OSCC [27]. Additionally, the results of the present study revealed that stemness features and metastatic traits were elevated following overexpression of miR-1246, which were consistent with previous reports of other cancers [17,20]. Taken together, these findings demonstrated that miR-1246 confers tumorigenicity and affects cancer stemness in OSCC.

Another major obstacle to success with cancer therapy in OSCC is the presence of drug-resistance. Therefore, we evaluated the chemosensitivity after the suppression of miR-1246 in cisplatin-treated OSCC and demonstrated that cancer cell survival, self-renewal, and drug-resistant marker were all downregulated (Figure 5). Moreover, our results showed that the expression of miR-1246 was positively correlated with the drug-resistant marker, ABCG2. In accordance with our findings, it has been reported that knockdown of miR-1246 resulted in the higher sensitization of hepatocellular carcinoma cells to chemotherapy [17], and inhibition of miR-1246 significantly increased radiosensitivity in lung cancer cells [20]. Several studies have shown that miR-1246 regulates drug resistance and metastatic capacities via targeting cell adhesion molecule 1 [13], death receptor 5 [20], metallothioneins [18], or Wnt/β-catenin signaling in lung or liver cancers [17]. It has been known that Oct4 activated the miR-1246 expression and functionally regulated the properties of cancer stemness in liver cancer through the directly regulating AXIN2 and GSK3β in the Wnt/β-catenin pathway [17]. Our previous studies have revealed that the elevated Oct4 mediated the tumor-initiating property and was associated with drug resistance and poor survival in OSCC patients [32,33,34], therefore it is worth to investigate whether Oct4 induces the expression of miR-1246 in oral cancer in the future study.

In the present work, we showed that miR-1246 repressed the expression of CCNG2 in OSCC (Figure 6), leading to increased cancer stemness. CCNG2 encodes a cyclin homolog, cyclin G2, associated with growth inhibition [35,36], and cyclin G2 dysregulation has been reported in human oral cancer [37]. It has been found that the silence of cyclin G2 in oral keratinocytes resulted in enhanced cell growth and may contribute to oral carcinogenesis [37]. Besides, CCNG2 has been shown to correlate significantly with lymph node metastasis, clinical stage, and poor overall survival in various cancer types [38,39,40]. Repression of CCNG2 was found to enhance cancer cell survival, including supporting proliferation, clonogenicity or attenuating drug effect [41,42]. Various miRs has been found to inhibit CCNG2 to stimulate tumor growth [43,44], and a couple of studies have revealed that miR-1246 promoted cancer stemness, metastasis, and chemoresistance via negatively regulating CCNG2 in pancreatic [45] and colorectal [46] cancers. In consistent with these findings, our results demonstrated that miR-1246-inhibited CCNG2 was the key to self-renewal and metastasis in OSCC. CCNG2 has been shown to inhibit epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by disrupting Wnt/β-catenin signaling [47], which has been proven to involve in migration and invasion in OSCC [48]. In addition, activation of EMT was implicated in the generation of CSCs and crucial in the cascades of metastasis [49]. Since miR-1246 has been revealed to drive Wnt/β-catenin activation in liver CSCs [17], it is critical to evaluate the impact of miR-1246 on EMT transcriptional factors and the Wnt/β-catenin signaling in OSCC to further understand the molecular mechanism underlying the miR-1246-associated cancer stemness.

4. Materials and Methods

4.1. OSCC Tissues and Cell Culture

Samples of OSCC (T) and normal paired noncancerous matched tissues (N) were collected after obtaining written informed consent. All procedures were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by The Institutional Review Board in Chung Shan Medical University Hospital on 1 August 2017 (ethic code: CSMUH No:CS17081). Tumor tissues were snap frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C for quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR). The OSCC cell lines SAS, GNM, OC3, and Fadu cells were cultivated as previously described [27].

4.2. qRT–PCR Analysis

For miR-1246 levels, qRT-PCR was performed using TaqMan miRNA assays with a specific primer (Applied Biosystems, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and detection was conducted using a StepOne Plus real-time PCR system [50]. For Sox2 detection, total RNA was prepared from cells using Trizol reagent according to the manufacturer’s protocol (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA). qRT-PCRs of mRNAs were reverse-transcribed by the Superscript III first-strand synthesis system (Invitrogen) and reactions on the resulting cDNAs were carried out on an ABI StepOne™ Real-Time PCR Systems (Applied Biosystems). The primer sequences used in this study were listed as follows: Sox2: 5′-CGAGCTGGTCATGGAGTTGT-3′ and 5′-ATGGACAGTTACGCGCACAT-3′; and GAPDH: 5′-CTCATGACCACAGTCCATGC-3′ and 5′-TTCAGCTCTGGGATGACCTT-3′.

4.3. Flow Cytometry for Cancer Stem Cell Isolation and Drug Resistance Analysis

Cells were stained with CD133 (Miltenyi Biotech, Auburn, CA, USA), CD44 antibodies (phycoerythrin-conjugated; BioLegend, San Diego, CA, USA) or aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1; StemCell Technologies Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada) followed by fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis (FACS) to isolate the cancer stem cells or examine their expression as previously described [24,51]. For drug resistance analysis, cells were stained with the ABCG2 antibody (Chemicon, Temecula, CA, USA) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Fluorescence emission from 10,000 cells was measured with FACS Calibur (Becton Dickinson, San Jose, CA, USA) using CellQuest software.

4.4. Tumorspheres Culture for Cancer Stem Cell Selection

Spheroid cells from OSCC were cultured in the serum-free DMEM/F12 medium (Gibco, Grand Island, NY, USA) consisting of N2 supplement (Gibco), human recombinant basic fibroblast growth factor, and epidermal growth factor (R&D Systems, Minneapolis, MN, USA). Cells were plated at 104 live cells/10-mm low attachment dishes, and the medium was changed every other day until the tumor sphere formation was observed in about 2 weeks [24].

4.5. Downregulation or Overexpression of miR-1246

1 × 106 cells were used for the transfection experiments. miR-1246 mimic, miR-1246 inhibitor, and scramble (Scr) control were purchased from Applied Biosystems. LipofectamineTM 3000 transfection reagent (Invitrogen) was used according to the manufacturer’s protocol.

4.6. Cancer Stemness Phenotypic Analyses

After transfected with inhibitor or mimics, tumor cells were cultured as spheroid cells to evaluate their self-renewal ability. Cell density was 1000 cells/mL in the serum-free medium as described earlier [24].

For migration or invasion capacities, 24-well Transwell system with an 8.0 μm porous transparent polyethylene terephthalate membrane was used. Cells (1 × 105/well) were added to the upper chambers (filter coated with Matrigel for invasion assay) in the low serum medium. Medium supplemented with higher serum were used as a chemoattractant in the lower chamber followed by 24 h incubation. Subsequently, cells that had migrated through the membrane to the lower surface were stained with crystal violet and counted from five different fields under a fluorescence microscope.

Soft agar colony forming assay was carried out to evaluate the clonogenicity. Each well of a 6-well culture dish was coated with 2 mL bottom agar mixture (Sigma–Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) (DMEM, 10% (v/v) fetal calf serum, 0.6% (w/v) agar). After the bottom layer was solidified, a top agar-medium mixture containing 2 × 104 cells was added and incubated at 37 °C for 4 weeks followed by crystal violet staining. The number of total colonies with a diameter ≥100 μm was counted from 5 fields per well for a total of 15 fields in triplicate experiments [24].

4.7. Subcutaneous Xenografts in Nude Mice

The animal study was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee in Chung Shan Medical University on 23 December 2016 (ethic code: 1871). OSCC cells transfected with miR-1245 inhibitors or mimics were injected subcutaneously into BALB/c nude mice (6–8 weeks). Imaging measurement was performed using an IVIS50 animal imaging system (Xenogen Corp., South San Francisco, CA, USA) as the photons emitted from the target site penetrated through the tissue could be externally detected and quantified. Tumor volume was calculated using the following formula: Tumor volume (cm3) = (length × width2)/2.

4.8. Cell Survival Assay

1 × 103 cells were seeded in a 24-well plate, and then MTT solution was added and incubated at 37 °C for 3 h. The supernatant was removed, and 200 μL of dimethyl sulfoxide was added and then the O.D. value of the solution was analyzed by a microplate reader set at 570 nm.

4.9. Immunoblotting Analysis

Cell protein extraction and immunoblotting analysis were conducted to examine the expression of CCNG2 as previously described [51]. Th sample was boiled and separated on 10% SDS-PAGE. The proteins were transferred to PVDF membrane (Amersham, Arlington Heights, IL, USA) by wet-transfer. The immunoreactive bands were developed using an ECL-plus chemiluminescence substrate (Perkin-Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA) and captured by LAS-1000 plus Luminescent Image Analyzer (GE Healthcare, Piscataway, NJ, USA).

4.10. Luciferase Activity Assay

The pmirGLO-CCNG2-Wt reporter was generated by cloning wild-type putative target region of CCNG2 to pmirGLO plasmids (Promega, Madison, WI, USA) following the manufacturer’s instructions. pmirGLO-CCNG2-mut reporter was generated by mutagenesis. Cells were co-transfected pmirGLO-CCNG2-Wt reporter, pmirGLO-CCNG2-mut reporter, miR-1246 mimics, or miR-Scr using Lipofectamine 2000 reagent followed by analysis of luciferase activity.

4.11. Statistical Analysis

SPSS (version 13.0; SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for statistical analysis. Pearson’s correlation coeffiecient was used to evaluate the correlation between miR-1246 and stemness markers and CCNG2. Statistical differences were evaluated with the Student’s t-test and were considered significant at p < 0.05.

5. Conclusions

Collectively, this study constructed cell models with gain- and loss-of-function of miR-1246 to assess its biofunctions and direct target in OSCC. These data showed that miR-1246 serves as an oncogene in OSCC and its abnormal upregulation facilitates the malignant progression and drug resistance. Our results demonstrated that repression of CCNG2 by miR-1246 leads to elevated oncogenicity. Given that downregulation of miR-1246 results in the attenuated stemness and in vivo tumorigenicity, it may be an effective therapeutic approach for OSCC.