Matrine involves in the progression of gastric cancer through inhibiting miR-93-5p and upregulating the expression of target gene AHNAK.

Matrine, also known as oxymatrine, is an important active ingredient of traditional Chinese herb Sophora flavescens. Recent studies have found that matrine may inhibit multiple tumors through inhibiting the tumor cell proliferation, inducing cell apoptosis, blocking cell cycle, suppressing cell invasion and migration and assisting in the synergy, and attenuation of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. This study mainly investigated the role of matrine in gastric cancer and its possible mechanism. The real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction technique showed that matrine inhibited the proliferation and migration of gastric tumor cells and significantly suppressed the expression of miR-93-5p. The dual-luciferase reporter gene assay indicated that AHNAK was a target gene of miR-93-5p and regulated by miR-93-5p and matrine. The torsion test demonstrated that matrine exerted its role via miR-93-5p while miR-93-5p played a role by targeting AHNAK. Thus, this study found that matrine affected the progression of gastric cancer by inhibiting the function of gastric cancer cells through the possible mechanism of inhibiting miR-93-5p expression to increase the expression level of the downstream target gene AHNAK.